Louis Armstrong's Trumpet | Christie's

An inscribed Selmer trumpet, used by jazz legend Louis Armstrong at the height of his powers in the early 1950s, is offered in The Exceptional Sale on 14 October

It is likely the trumpet was used on The California Concerts, a live album recorded in 1951 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium

According to Becky MacGuire, a senior specialist at Christie’s, Armstrong would play his instruments for about five years, then give them away as presents. The trumpet offered in The Exceptional Sale in New York on 14 October was given to Duke, the son of Abe and Frances Donin, two jazz aficionados whom Armstrong and his wife Lucille had met in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

‘The Donins probably first heard Armstrong at Culver City’s Cotton Club in the 1930s,’ says MacGuire. ‘Louis had gone to California to play the clubs and to try to break into Hollywood movies.’

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