Ocean County College OceanViews Magazine 2026 Summer-Fall - Flipbook - Page 16
OCC FOUNDATION
RICKY
RICCARDI
’01
When Ricky Riccardi accepted his first
Grammy Award, there was one challenge he wasn’t prepared for.
“The countdown starts, the music
comes on, and suddenly they’re telling
you to wrap it up,” he recalled with a
laugh. “They played me off!”
For Riccardi, a Toms River native and a
2001 Ocean County College graduate,
the moment felt surreal. After spending three years helping produce an
extensive Louis Armstrong collection
and writing the accompanying liner
notes, he had earned music’s highest
honor in a category that had fascinated him for years.
“I never thought it would happen to
me,” he said. “The strange thing is, the
category that always excited me was
Best Album Notes.”
Since that first win, Riccardi has
earned a second Grammy and become
one of the world’s foremost authorities on Louis Armstrong. As Director
of Research Collections at the Louis
Armstrong House Museum in Queens,
he has authored three acclaimed
biographies, taught courses at Queens
College and Jazz at Lincoln Center,
lectured internationally, and produced award-winning archival recordings that have introduced Armstrong’s
legacy to new generations. His most
recent book, Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The
Early Years of Louis Armstrong, earned
praise from filmmaker Ken Burns and
musician Jon Batiste and led to an
appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air with
Terry Gross.
But ask him where it all began, and he
doesn’t hesitate. “OCC is where all this
started for me.”
photo credit: Rankin
Raised in Toms River and a graduate of Toms River High School East,
Riccardi originally imagined a career
as a sportswriter. During his two years
at Ocean County College, he immersed
himself in campus media projects:
hosting an all-jazz radio show on
WOCC, working on Seascape literary
magazine, and serving as editor-inchief of the Viking News student newspaper, where he created his own jazz
column. His first piece, about Louis
Armstrong’s later years, earned him a
collegiate journalism award.
“All right,” he remembers thinking.
“I’m on my way.”
A research project gave him the opportunity to dive deeply into Armstrong’s
life and career, and the paper he
wrote would become the foundation
for the books, lectures, and career
that followed. After graduating from
OCC, he continued his research at
Rutgers University, where he earned
a bachelor’s degree in journalism and
a master’s degree in jazz history and
research
“It prepared me for everything that
would come,” Riccardi said of his OCC
experience. “The newspaper, being
with that staff, made me who I was.
I always fall back on what I learned
there.”
He credits the College’s faculty as
much as its opportunities.
“I got the most out of my education.
The teachers were wonderful, and I’m
still friends with a lot of them. They
were the best teachers I ever had in
college.”
That support helped launch a career
Riccardi once could hardly imagine.
But after visiting the Louis Armstrong
House archives for the first time,
he knew he had found where he
belonged. “I thought, ‘If there’s anywhere I need to end up, it needs to be
here.’” When an opportunity to work
there opened up in 2009, he accepted
the position and began a demanding
daily commute from Toms River to
Queens. For more than a decade, he
made the trip while balancing family
life with his wife, Margaret, and their
three daughters.
“It was a tradeoff,” he said. “This is
what I was put on earth to do.”
Since the pandemic, technology has
made that work more accessible
than ever, allowing him to manage
the museum’s archive remotely
while continuing to write, teach, and
produce new projects centered on
Armstrong’s extraordinary legacy.
Despite his remarkable accomplishments, Riccardi remains focused less
on accolades than on the work itself.
“I have my dream job,” he said. “As
long as I’m in the Armstrong field, I’ll
be happy.”
Riccardi returns to Ocean County
College in June as part of the Blauvelt
Speaker Series. For students and community members alike, his story is a
reminder that extraordinary careers
can begin with a single opportunity,
a supportive mentor, or a research
project that sparks a lifelong passion.
For Ricky Riccardi, all of those opportunities began at OCC.
