Louis Armstrong House to Honor Dick Cavett, Stephen Maitland-Lewis & Andrew P. Jackson

The Louis Armstrong House Museum announces 2014 Louie Award recipients! The Louie Award is the museum's annual award presented in honor of dedicated work to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of Louis Armstrong. This year the Louie Award will be bestowed upon Dick Cavett, legendary talk-show host and author; Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako) Executive Director, Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center in Queens; and Stephen Maitland-Lewis award-winning author and jazz aficionado.

Previous recipients of the Louie Award include Quincy Jones, George Avakian, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Heath, Senior Vice Chancellor Jay Hershenson of CUNY, Stanley Crouch, and George Wein.

Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett, known best as the host of The Dick Cavett Show on ABC, PBS, USA, HBO, and CNBC, has been nominated for 11 Emmy awards -- the most recent in 2012 for an HBO special with Mel Brooks -- and has won three. A frequent guest on interview shows, including HuffPost Live, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Imus in the Morning, Cavett has written four books including Brief Encounters in 2014, based on the online opinion columns he writes for the New York Times. He has appeared in movies, TV specials, TV commercials, and several Broadway plays. He starred in 2014 in an off-Broadway play, "Hellman v. McCarthy" with the Abingdon Theatre Company.

Dick Cavett hosted Louis Armstrong as a guest on his talk show three times between 1970 and 1971 and was an honorary pallbearer at Armstrong's funeral. Cavett first met Armstrong at Fort Hood in Texas in December 1967 during the filming of an episode of ABC's "Operation Entertainment." While both were signing autographs for young troops heading to Vietnam, Cavett recalled, "At that point I realized I was in touch with a magical personality just chatting with him. He was one of those people that emanate something you can feel. Probably one of a handful of best cases of that I've ever seen. Orson Wells had it, Brando, a few others."

Satchmo appeared as a guest on The Dick Cavett Show in January 1970, his first major TV appearance after spending over a year convalescing at home after two stints in intensive care. His last appearance on the program was to promote his March 1971 engagement at the Waldorf-Astoria, the final public performance of his storied career. Each time, Armstrong was warmly embraced by Cavett's house band, led by Bobby Rosengarden and featuring musicians such as Dick Hyman and Milt Hinton. Cavett explains, "It was clear that one of their own was there. He was king of it all."

Stephen Maitland-Lewis
Stephen Maitland-Lewis is an award-winning author, a British attorney, and a former international investment banker. He held senior positions in the City of London, Kuwait, and on Wall Street before moving to California in 1991. He owned a luxury hotel and a world-renowned restaurant and was also the Director of Marketing of a Los Angeles daily newspaper. His novels Hero on Three Continents and Ambition each received numerous awards, while his latest, Botticelli's Bastard, was published in August 2014. Maitland-Lewis and his wife, Joni Berry, divide their time between their homes in Beverly Hills and New Orleans.

Maitland-Lewis is a jazz aficionado and a Board Trustee of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York. As a 12-year-old boy in England during the post-World War II period, jazz aficionado Stephen Maitland-Lewis would listen over and over to 78 RPM recordings of Louis Armstrong's music. No one was more astonished than he, when a fan letter he wrote to Armstrong resulted in a private lunch with the famous musician. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Even as his illustrious career began to take shape, Stephen's correspondence with Armstrong continued for 15 years until the jazz legend died in 1971. Stephen went on to become an award-winning author but has said that he will "forever be touched by Armstrong's greatness." In November 2010, Stephen was named a Board Trustee for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in NY, coming full circle with his association with Armstrong.

Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako)
Few people have done more to selflessly serve the citizens of Queens than Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako). Louis Armstrong "stayed put" in Corona because he was devoted to its working class community as Jackson is equaled devoted to serving the vibrant community of Louis's neighborhood today. When he was hired as Executive Director in 1980, the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center was essentially a "people's library" located in a former Woolworth's store. Under Andrew's bold vision and dynamic leadership, it has evolved into a vital branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, occupying a new, state-of-the-art facility, and holding the Black Heritage Reference Center, New York City's largest circulating collection of materials on Black Culture (rivaled only by the Schomberg Center in Harlem). The library's vibrant public programs-including concerts, lectures, workshops, poetry slams, after-school study programs and more-annually serve tens of thousands.

Andrew has been an active member of the Advisory Board of the Louis Armstrong House Museum since its inception in 1995. The museum and the Langston Hughes Library often collaborate on programs. Andrew's continued advocacy in Queens is vital to Louis's neighborhood.

The Louie Award
The Louie Award will be presented this year at the museum's Gala 2014. Gala 2014 will be held at the sumptuous Capitale at 130 Bowery in New York City. Cocktails begin at 6:00 pm; dinner and award ceremony follow at 7:00 pm and includes a special performance by Catherine Russell whose own father, Luis Russell, performed with Louis Armstrong.

For information about gala tickets, leadership tables, sponsorship opportunities and journal advertising contact Eve Wolf at 718.997.3581, via email at gala@LouisArmstrongHouse.org or by visiting the museum online at LouisArmstrongHouse.org.

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