![]() ![]() On July 6, Armstrong died in his sleep, reportedly from heart failure. Four days later, he began an ill-advised two-week gig at the Waldorf Astoria that was followed by two heart attacks, one of them just two days after his final Waldorf show. Armstrong taped it on February 26, 1971, on a reel-to-reel recorder at his home in Queens, New York, during his last spell of good health. The poem, first published in 1823, would be Armstrong’s final commercial recording. ![]() When the 69-year-old describes Santa’s “little round belly /that shook when he laughed like a bowl of jelly,” he breaks into a wheezy giggle that sounds like a truck rumbling to life at a green light. ![]() "This is Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong,” the voice resounds, “talking to all the kids from all over the world at Christmastime.” With that, the trumpeter and singer tucks into a lyrical, buoyant reading of “The Night Before Christmas.” He hews to the words but makes them his own in a voice that glitters with joy. ![]()
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