The Guardian - Armstrong spoke adoringly of his mother and sister, forever grateful for their encouragement. While biographers have written about his tough childhood, there has been no proof – although much speculation – that they had to turn to prostitution to make ends meet. Now police reports and interviews have come to light revealing that his mother, Mayann, and sister, Beatrice, were arrested on numerous occasions, spending days in jail.
A new book by Ricky Riccardi, director of research collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York and a Grammy award-winner for his work on Armstrong’s recordings, draws on unpublished tapes, manuscripts and letters, including interviews with Armstrong’s sister late in life, an unfinished autobiography by Armstrong’s second wife, Lil Hardin, and Armstrong’s unedited manuscript for his autobiography Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans.
Riccardi told the Observer: “Louis talked about the prostitution in his neighbourhood, but he never went into his mother doing it and getting arrested. Now I have the black-and-white proof. The incredible part is that all the police records were uploaded to ancestry.com [the family history website] about a year and a half ago.” They appear to have been held by the New Orleans public library."
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