First Sunday Jazz Jam PopUp Sunday November 02, 2025

 Precious Cargo Exchange PCE Presents 1st Sunday Jazz Jam PopUp

                        November 02, 2025 Featuring Cequita Monique Celebrating

     

FATHER OF THE BLUES W.C. Handy with The Culture House Band Center for Precious Cargo Exchange PCE Presents 1st Sunday Jazz Jam PopUp 

November 02, 2025 Featuring Cequita Monique Celebrating 

FATHER OF THE BLUES W.C. Handy with The Culture House Band Center for Southern Folklore Precious Cargo tickets $25 in Advance $30 At the Door Purchase tickets in advance Cashapp $PCEProductions or "1st Sunday Jazz Jam Pop Up Series https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1st-sunday-jazz-jam-pop-up-series-tickets-1243569492829?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=wsa&aff=ebdsshwebmobile"

W.C. Handy's birthday is November 16, 1873, not November 2. In 2025, his birthday will be commemorated with events on and around that date. 

Notable events

• W.C. Handy Birthday Celebration in Florence, Alabama: In his hometown, the W.C. Handy Birthday Celebration will take place on November 16, 2025, at the W.C. Handy Home and Museum. The event will include live music, refreshments, and free museum admission.

• 1st Sunday Jazz Jam Pop-Up Series in Memphis: A different event celebrating Handy's birthday is scheduled for November 2, 2025. It will take place in Memphis, where he built much of his career. The event will be held at the Center for Southern Folklore and will feature live music from The Culture House Band & Ensemble. 

Southern Folklore Precious Cargo tickets $25 in Advance $30 At the Door Purchase tickets in advance Cashapp $PCEProductions or "1st Sunday Jazz Jam Pop Up Series https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1st-sunday-jazz-jam-pop-up-series-tickets-1243569492829?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=wsa&aff=ebdsshwebmobile"

W.C. Handy's birthday is November 16, 1873, not November 2. In 2025, his birthday will be commemorated with events on and around that date. 

Notable events

• W.C. Handy Birthday Celebration in Florence, Alabama: In his hometown, the W.C. Handy Birthday Celebration will take place on November 16, 2025, at the W.C. Handy Home and Museum. The event will include live music, refreshments, and free museum admission.

• 1st Sunday Jazz Jam Pop-Up Series in Memphis: A different event celebrating Handy's birthday is scheduled for November 2, 2025. It will take place in Memphis, where he built much of his career. The event will be held at the Center for Southern Folklore and will feature live music from The Culture House Band & Ensemble. 

First Sunday Jazz Jam PopUp The Armstrong Show

 First Sunday Jazz Jam PopUp

Join us August 03, 2025  Jazz Spotlight on Lillian Hardin-Armstrong and Jazz Great Louis Armstrong. Live from The Center for Southern Folklore  119 S. Main St Memphis, TN 38103.
First  Sunday Featuring Cequita Monique  with The Culture House Band!!! #SaveTheDate You can purchase advance tickets $25 Cashapp $PCEProductions or online "https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1st-sunday-jazz-jam-pop-up-series-tickets-1234196046599" This Sunday experience is a Series of Memphis International Culture House (MICH) grounding its foundation in the fertile roots of Art and Education while nurturing the appreciation of its citizens of Jazz local and abroad. This project recognizes the contributions made to the American songbook  by women of Jazz and others.

My Heart: The Story of Lil Hardin Armstrong

Portrait of Lil Hardin. Photo courtesy of the Frank Driggs Collection.
In the 1920s she was known as “Hot Miss Lil.” Today Lil Hardin is noteworthy as one of the most prominent women in early jazz. A pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader, Hardin was also a guiding light for her husband—Louis Armstrong. On this edition of Riverwalk Jazz, we salute the incomparable Lil Hardin Armstrong with a series of rare interviews recorded in the 1950s in which she talks about her life in music and her marriage to the great jazzman. These interviews were first released on the Riverside LP, Satchmo and Me.

 

If Lil Hardin Armstrong’s name comes up today, it’s almost always because of her famous last name. In the jazz world of the 1920s women, especially black women were relegated to singing or dancing in the chorus line, but Lil Hardin had a serious career as a respected jazz composer, pianist and bandleader long before her marriage to Louis Armstrong. Lil worked with prominent black bands in Chicago; she performed with Sugar Johnny’s Creole Orchestra, Freddie Keppard’s Band and she led her own band at the Dreamland Café. Lil often fronted recording groups including the New Orleans Wanderers, with whom she recorded her 1926 tune “Papa Dip” —a number she named after Louis Armstrong.
 

Lil and Louis met in Chicago in 1923. Photo courtesy of the Frank Driggs Collection.
Lil and Louis were band mates in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band when they married in 1924. Louis was the new kid in town and Lil the established player on the Chicago jazz scene. Lil Hardin was not impressed with Louis on first sight. In a recorded interview heard here, she says that ‘Louis was too fat and had a funny hairdo.’ Nonetheless, she was won over by his charm and talent, and within the year Louis and Lil had married. Lil Hardin saw tremendous potential in Louis Armstrong’s playing that he couldn’t see himself. Early on, she was the driving force behind his bookings and helped launch Armstrong as a star soloist. She insisted that he leave King Oliver and strike out on his own.
 
There’s a photograph of Lil taken when she was with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in the early 1920s. She’s a petite, lady-like figure, perched on a piano bench. In contrast, she’s surrounded by the beefy, worldly-wise musicians in Oliver’s band. You can see in a flash why Hardin’s mother was dead set against her daughter taking a job with these guys. Lil was, after all, a classically trained musician who had studied at Fisk University. Some of these jazz musicians could barely read music. Lil surprised the musicians in Oliver’s band with her talent. Louis Armstrong once made this remark about Lil: “It was startling to find a valedictorian fall in line and play such good jazz.” Playing every night on the South Side of Chicago, King Oliver’s band drew standing room only crowds, including white musicians from the North Side like cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and tunesmith Hoagy Carmichael. Lil says, “They would listen so intently, and I didn’t know what they were trying to listen to. Now I know.”


King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, 1923. Photo courtesy of redhotjazz.
Lil Hardin’s background was very different from the hardcore poverty Louis Armstrong knew as a child. Lil was born in 1898 in Memphis, TN. Though her mother worked as a maid, she gave her kids a comfortable and somewhat refined life. She made sure that Lil attended Mrs. Hicks’ School of Music and the prestigious Fisk University. Lil’s mother favored hymns and popular songs and banned Lil from having anything to do with jazz and blues when she was a teenager. Ironically, in 1918 Lil’s mother moved her family to Chicago—a center of the burgeoning jazz universe and a magnet for the best New Orleans players. Lil soon found a job at a music store where she met piano giant Jelly Roll Morton and Chicago’s top jazz bandleader King Oliver. Before long Lil made a good living as a jazz piano player in spite of her mother’s initial objection to the genre.
 
Lil and Louis’ marriage and musical partnership began to come apart in 1930. Louis was on the road almost every night of the year— and it took a toll on their home life. The next stop for Louis was New Orleans, where headlines in the local paper played up the ‘hometown hero’ angle, making much of the fact that Louis had sold newspapers in the Crescent City as a kid. According to Lil, Louis had changed his outlook on life, complaining that Lil was “too old fashioned.” They split and Lil returned to Chicago.
 

Lil Hardin. Photo by Helge Mass.
Lil continued to have a rich career in music after her separation from Louis in 1931; they finally divorced in 1938. Lil appeared in several Broadway shows and made a series of vocal sides for Decca records. In the late 1960s Lil backed off from the music business, and spent more and more time in a place she and Louis bought in the early years of their marriage in the lake resort town of Idlewild, Michigan. In July 1971 Louis Armstrong died. Only a month later in August 1971, Lil was performing at a memorial concert for Louis in Chicago, when she collapsed and died on stage. So ends one of the great love stories of jazz.
 
In an interesting footnote to our story, seven years after she died, a song composed by Lil Hardin Armstrong topped the pop charts all over the world. Ringo Starr recorded her composition “Bad Boy” in 1978 and it was on the radio everywhere. No doubt Lil would have enjoyed that immensely.
 

 
“My Heart,” composed by Lil Hardin, was first conceived as a waltz in ¾ time; but Louis and Lil always played it as a hot jazz piece in 4/4 time. Our version features The Jim Cullum Jazz Band with special guests Chicagoan Mike Walbridge on tuba and Bay Area cornetist Leon Oakley. The addition of tuba and second cornet duplicates the lineup of the great King Oliver band as it was configured in Chicago in the early 1920s.
 

Gennett record label image courtesy of indiana.edu.
The original Oliver recording of “Chimes Blues,“ as arranged by Lil Hardin, contained the first recorded solo by Louis Armstrong. Heard here, our tribute features the great trumpeter Doc Cheatham with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band.
 
Though “Come Back Sweet Papa” was first recorded in 1926 after Louis Armstrong had left the Oliver band, our rendition on this broadcast features instrumentation consistent with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.
 
“Skid-dat-de-dat“ was a Hot 5 collaboration composed by Lil Hardin and Louis Armstrong; and recorded by the Hot 5 in 1926.
 
“Mabel's Dream,” originally recorded by King Oliver in 1923 with Lil Hardin on piano; the version heard here features the expanded Oliver configuration of The Jim Cullum Jazz Band with Mike Walbridge on tuba and Leon Oakley on cornet.
 
The interpretation of “Ory's Creole Trombone“ heard on this broadcast features long-time Cullum Band trombonist Mike Pittsley. The tune was one of the original Armstrong Hot 5 numbers recorded in 1927 for the Okeh label and released on 78rpm discs.
 
“Struttin' with Some Barbecue“ is also a Hot 5 classics. Like many early New Orleans tunes, the title contains an impolite sexual reference. The trumpet soloist on our rendition is Jon-Erik Kellso, a leading champion of classic jazz in New York City.
 
The hymn-like “Riverside Blues“ was composed by Richard M. Jones and Thomas A. (“Georgia Tom”) Dorsey in Chicago for King Oliver, who recorded it in 1923 shortly before Louis and Lil left his band.
 
“S.O.L. Blues” was an original Hot 5 number. Our version features Australian cornet master Bob Barnard.
 
Photo credit for Home Page: Lil Hardin. Photo courtesy of the Frank Driggs Collection.
 

Precious Cargo Exchange Productions Presents First Sunday Jazz Jam PopUp

Join us every First Sunday, at The Center for Southern Folklore 119 S. Main St Memphis, TN 38103 for First Sunday Featuring Cequita Monique with The Culture House Band!!! Advance tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite or purchase seats by $Cashapp $PCEProductions

#SaveTheDate 

This Sunday experience features Memphis song stylist, jazz appreciator and founding director for MICH, Cequita Monique. It is a delight to spotlight the amazing Jazz Music and Culture.

Memphis International Culture House (MICH) is grounding its foundation in the fertile roots of Art and Education while nurturing the appreciation of its citizens of Jazz. This project recognizes the contributions made to the American songbook by women of Jazz and others.
 

A Virtual Performance Come Sunday August 2 2020

Posted by Cequita Monique on Sunday, August 2, 2020

Meet Cequita Monique

Area premiere of Vinnette Carroll’s ground-breaking, gospel-infused Broadway musical

‘Your Arms Too Short to Box with God’: Created and written by Vinnette Carroll, music and lyrics by Alex Bradford and Micki Grant. Directed by Harry Bryce. Runs Wednesday through April 5, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe, 1012 N. Orange Ave., Sarasota. 941-366-1505; westcoastblacktheatre.org

Vinnette Carroll’s “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God” was a ground-breaking show when it opened on Broadway in 1976 introducing audiences to an all-black cast and creative team performing original gospel music as it had never been heard on the Broadway stage.

The original production ran for more than a year, returned in two revivals (one featuring Al Green and Patti Labelle) and toured extensively.

But the script, which tells the story of the crucifixion of Jesus based on the Book of Matthew, was never published and the show has not been produced in many years.

The musical has its area debut in a new production by the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe, which had to put together a script and songs from various versions and recordings.

“We are so blessed to do a show that is rarely if ever produced,” said director Harry Bryce, who spent three years working with Carroll in the 1980s at her Vinnette Carroll Repertory Company in Fort Lauderdale. She ran the company until illness forced her to retire in 2001. She died at age 80 in 2002.

Bryce said he is trying to bring Carroll’s own spirit, style and vision to this production.

“I had an intimate relationship with her and her work through the three years I was with her,” he said. “I was fortunate to have seen the original production and watch how it morphed into other versions. But this is her show, partially because I sat at her feet for three years and studied her technique, seeing a version of how she moves people around on stage. She was brilliant at that. I’m going by what I learned from her and her other shows that I worked on.”

Bryce said he still has a shirt that was a gift from Carroll.


“I have always loved corduroy, and one day when I was helping her choose something to wear to an event, I saw this blue corduroy shirt in her closet. She told me that was the shirt she wore the whole time she was creating ‘Box.’ And she said ‘If you like it you can have it. Somehow I think you’re going to need that shirt one day.’ And lo and behold, I did.”

Carroll wrote the music that is used primarily to tell the Bible story, with lyrics by Alex Bradford and Micki Grant.

Musical director James “Jay” Dodge II is creating new arrangements for a 4 to 5-piece band that replicates the 1970s sound of the original used on Broadway.

“We have about 19 of the 24 songs that were originally heard in the show,” said Dodge, who is using an older bass to get the right sound.

Dodge, who has a long association with gospel music, said the music in “Box” is different. “It is gospel music, but it has such a progressive sound that gospel music did not have in your typical churches in the 1970s. She brought a cutting-edge approach to gospel with horns, guitars, synthesizers and things like that, where your typical church sound was acoustic piano, upright bass and drums.”


They are working with an ensemble cast of 16 that includes Syreeta S. Banks, Teresa Stanley, Charles Lattimore, Raleigh Mosely, Samone Hicks, choreographer Donald Frison, Chakara Rosa, Derric Gobourne Jr. and Joshua Thompson.

Lattimore plays Jesus, with Mosely as Pontius Pilate, Banks as his wife, Frison as Judas and Rosa as Mary.

This production will be shorter than the original because some of the material has been lost over the years, Bryce said. Some of the songs also are not included, but Dodge said the cast will be speaking the words “in the Greek theater style as it was originally done.”

Bryce said “it’s all kind of paying homage to Vinette Carroll. That’s her technique of theater. That’s what she leaned on to make her statements.”

Westcoast founder and Artistic Director Nate Jacobs said the production is a way “to honor the remarkable Vinnette Carroll, a playwright, actress and director who was the first African-American woman to direct on Broadway. During her long and distinguished career, she taught, directed, appeared onstage and in films, and developed a new form of theater: the ‘gospel song-play,’ combining music, theater and dance in inspirational ways, as audiences will see in this production.”