Jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s ‘second home’ among property destroyed by Hurricane Ida

By Stacy M. Brown
Contributing Writer

(NNPA Newswire) — Hurricane Ida continued throughout the week last week to leave destruction and devastation in its wake as residents from New Orleans and Mississippi realize just how much they’ve lost.

The devastation also claimed the Karnofsky Tailor Shop and Residence, “second-home” of famed jazz legend Louis Armstrong.

A viral social media video captured Ida destroying the shop at 427 South Rampart Street in New Orleans.

Armstrong grew up near the shop, and by the age of 12, was known to frequent the place owned by the Karnofsky family, who offered him a job.

According to cultural heritage radio station WWOZ, Karnofsky Tailor Shop and Residence sat along a stretch of road populated primarily by immigrant-owned businesses that catered to a Black clientele.

The National Park Service website noted that “The Karnofsky Store was, beginning in 1913, the shop, with residence above, of the Jewish family that provided a second home to the young Louis Armstrong.”

The site administrator’s continued:

“He worked for the Karnofskies on their coal and junk wagons, tooting ‘a small tin horn,’ and ate meals with the family, either in their earlier home on Girod Street or here, or maybe both.”

NPS historians said the Karnofskys loaned Armstrong money for his first cornet.

They continued:

“Morris Karnofsky, the son of the family and Armstrong’s boyhood friend, opened the first jazz record store in town, Morris Music. Located at various addresses on South Rampart Street through the years, it was a meeting place for musicians. Armstrong visited his friend and his musician buddies at the store on his many return trips to the city.”

This article originally published in the September 6, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.