Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  His father abandoned the family when Louis was an infant, so he lived in stark poverty in a two room house.  Louis began to perform on street corners with three other boys for tips around 1907.  With money loaned by a family Louis worked for, he bought his first instrument, a cornet.  When Louis was around 11 years old, he fired a pistol in the street to celebrate New Year's Eve.  Unfortunately a policeman was nearby, thus arresting Louis to be sent to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys.  Ironically, being confined to the Waif's Home became the turning point of his musical life.  Armstrong received musical instruction from the band director and was given a cornet to play in the brass band.  Eventually becoming the leader of the Waif's Home band, Louis dedicated himself to becoming a professional musician.  After his release from the Waif's Home, Louis became the apprentice of respected cornetist Joe Oliver, who played a style of jazz known as New Orleans, for about five years.  When King Oliver left New Orleans for Chicago in February 1919, Armstrong played in the jazz band of Kid Ory, and later in the band of Fate Marable. While the employ of the band of Fate Marable, he performed on riverboats traveling along the Mississippi River.  In August of 1922 Armstrong moved to Chicago to join the band of his mentor, the Creole Jazz Band, making his first record the following year with King Oliver.  After two years in Chicago, Louis struck out on his own and joined the band of Fletcher Henderson in New York City.  Here Armstrong became known as the finest soloist in the style known as hot jazz.  Returning to Chicago in 1925, Louis Armstrong created his own band called the Hot Fives, which included Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, and Lil Hardin.  From 1925 to 1928, Armstrong led this band and created some of the most enduring pieces of jazz, cumulating in his most seminal recording, "West End Blues" in 1928.  Other pieces of this era were "Cornet Chop Suey" and "Big Butter and Egg Man" in 1926, "Potato Head Blues" and "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" in 1927, and "Weather Bird" in 1928.  His legacy is one of the first jazz masters, and the standard by which jazz performers are still measured.  Through daring exploration and technical skill, Armstrong extended the playing range of the trumpet into impressive high notes.  Louis Armstrong transformed jazz from a collective improvisation to an art for individual soloists.  Later on in life, Armstrong became a popular movie star and wrote his autobiography Satchmo in 1956.  He died on July 6, 1971 in Corona, Queens, New York City,

-Chris Chan

Sources

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