Eighty-four year-old Jack Bradley, the world’s biggest collector of Louis Armstrong memorabilia, had a front row seat to Armstrong’s life for more than a decade. Bradley was born in Cape Cod in 1934 and eventually attended the Maritime Academy. At 25, he bought a camera, moved to New York, and within two weeks was dating Jeann Failows; a relationship that would alter the course of his life. Failows handled fan mail for Louis Armstrong, and it wasn’t long before Jack became a part of the musician’s inner circle in New York. “He became Louis’ photographer,” says Jack’s friend, Mike Persico. “Louis took him under his wing, and introduced him to people like Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. He’d be there when Louis got home to his house in Corona, Queens, or take photos of Louis loading up the tour bus with the neighborhood kids coming to help.” Jack photographed iconic moments and everyday scenes. “All sorts of people would knock at Louis’ door,” Mike says, of Jack’s memories from that time. “People like Dizzy Gillespie, who lived in the neighborhood. He’d come over and they’d eat grilled cheese sandwiches and talk. It was a jazz lover’s dream”
Jack photographed Armstrong from 1959 until his death in 1971 – capturing the jazz scene in New York, and all of its personalities; many of whom continued to visit Bradley after he moved back to the Cape with his wife Nancy in the mid-1970s. There, he continued collecting artifacts and emblems of jazz. “His home was full of everything from records to reels, to magazines, books, movies, sheet music, and negatives,” says Persico, who has spent the past year sorting through and cataloging the collection.
Bradley’s photographs of Louis have been donated to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, but a small part of his vast collection, from decades of friendship with the biggest jazz artists in the latter half of the 20th century, is now available at auction. “He documented a dying era in American culture — the jazz scene of the 1950s and 1960s, when people still went out to nightclubs,” notes Perisco. “He was the right guy at the right place at the right time.”
