Celebrate New Year's Eve With Pops!

We made it through another year, friends....take that, Mayans! Not only is the world still here, but so is this blog....you just can't kill it! Matters slowed to a trickle at times this year but this is still the 47th blog I put out this year, including my series on the Hot Sevens, which was fun.

I might have had more time to blog if it wasn't such a good year Pops! I found myself immersed in all forms of Popsology: preaching about Louis at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Brubeck Festival at the University of the Pacific, the Greenwich Library, the Monterey Jazz Festival and on a series of videos for A&E's Bio.com page. My book came out as a paperback. I wrote liner notes for three Armstrong sets, Storyville's Armstrong Box, Sony's OKeh, Columbia and Victor Recordings, 1925-1933 and my personal baby, Universal's Satchmo at Symphony Hall 65th Anniversary: The Complete Performances, which I co-produced with Harry Weinger. And it was another great year at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, especially in the spring when your daily votes in the Partners in Preservation contest helped garner the Museum $150,000 to preserve and restore Louis and Lucille's beautiful garden. (And I think I mentioned this before but earlier this year, I more or less took over the Louis Armstrong House Museum's Facebook page, sharing content and photos on almost a daily basis. "Like" it for a nonstop flow of Louis!) What a year!

For the previous four years, I've devoted New Year's Eve to sharing audio to a rare Louis Armstrong New Year's Eve broadcast. However, only four full broadcasts survive, to my knowledge, so without anything new to share, I'll just put up the links to those previous posts. Here they are:

December 31, 1967 - Las Vegas

December 31, 1954 - San Francisco

December 31, 1962 - Hollywood

December 31, 1953 - Yokohama, Japan

Louis also turned up on an all-star New Year's Eve radio broadcast from 1945, turning in a swinging version of "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" that I blogged about way back when here.

So thanks to all of you for sticking with me through 2012 and for continuing to show such interest and devotion to Louis Armstrong more than 40 years after he passed away. Here's to 2013!