The Birth of Blues: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A program for the Boston Symphony Hall that features Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. The program includes biographies and photographs of the performers. The cover features black text and a photograph of Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. The text on the cover reads: [The Birth of the Blues / Billie Holiday / Louis Armstrong / Symphony Hall, Friday, April 18 1947]. The interior pages contains additional information about the jazz musicians. The back cover is an advertisement for Eddie Levine's New Musical Cocktail Lounge.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1947
• Created by: Unidentified
• Subject of: Louis Armstrong, American, 1901 - 1971
• Subject of: Billie Holiday, American, 1915 - 1959
• Subject of: Luis Russell, Panamanian, 1902 - 1963
• Owned by: Maxine Sullivan, American, 1911 - 1987
• Type: programs
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 13 1/8 × 9 in. (33.3 × 22.9 cm)
• Place depicted: Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Instrumentalists (Musicians)
• Topic: Jazz (Music)
• Topic: Singers (Musicians)
• Object number: 2013.46.29.100
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.