Comments (0) Best Jazz Tour - 2001
Queens Jazz Trail
"I am here with the black people," Louis Armstrong once said, "with the Puerto Rican people, the Italian people, the Hebrew cats, and there's food in the Frigidaire. What else could I want?" Like many jazz luminaries—Gillespie, Basie, Coltrane, Holiday, the Adderley brothers—Armstrong settled in Queens during the 1940s, a comfortably diverse locale in an era of segregation. While much attention has been paid to Harlem and 52nd Street as homes for the music, the intrepid staff of Flushing Town Hall puts the borough back on the map with the QUEENS JAZZ TRAIL. They'll walk, talk, and drive you through it on a five-hour tour, complete with film footage and fried chicken. You'll have to wait for a look in Armstrong's icebox, however: Although the trail currently stops at Satchmo's front door, the house is scheduled to open as a museum in 2002. Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Boulevard, Flushing, Queens.
