David Reese, Curator of Louis Armstrong House, has died.

DAVID REESE, 63, on Feb. 3 in New York City. Curator of the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2012, he had an impressive resume of historic preservation experience. Among the major projects he oversaw were the restoration of the garden which the Armstrongs designed for musical performances and entertaining, and uncovering Satchmo’s life mask and reinstalling it for public view.

His previous assignments included the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, New York City’s Gracie Mansion and Gunston Hall in Virginia, the 18th century home of U.S. founding father George Mason.

Lew Shaw

Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times. 47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz. Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.