On a winter day now more than 50 years ago, Louis Armstrong went to work in the den at his home at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, Queens, New York.
On that day — Friday, Feb. 26, 1971 — he recorded this:
“The Night Before Christmas (A Poem),” Louis Armstrong, 1971, from the 7-inch single (Continental CR 1001). (This is the sleeve for that 45. You could have bought it for 25 cents if you also bought a carton of Kent, True, Newport or Old Gold cigarettes.)
There’s no music here. Just “Louis Satchmo Armstrong talkin’ to all the kids … from all over the world … at Christmas time,” reading Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem in a warm, gravelly voice.
“But I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, ‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night. A very good night.’
“And that goes for Satchmo, too. (Laughs softly.) Thank you.”
It was the last thing he ever recorded. Satchmo, 69 at the time, died a little over four months later, in July 1971. Satchmo, gone 53 years now.
I first got this cut almost 40 years ago on “The Stash Christmas Album,” a 1984 compilation LP that’s been out of print for almost that long.
David Cantwell, in yesterday’s post at No Fences Review, his fine Substack with my friend Charles Hughes, shared another cut from this record and said it’s “still one of the very finest various-artists holiday collections I know.”