LOUIS ARMSTRONG: ALL THAT JAZZ

Recently inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame in 2017, Louis Armstrong is credited for altering the history of jazz music. With his talents and dexterity, he traversed a journey from being a child born into poverty to a successful singer, trumpeter, soloist, bandleader, film star, and comedian. Along the course of his career which spanned about five decades, he transformed jazz steering it through the development and perfecting it as an art form. He infused creativity and life into the genre ensuring its survival. His greatest hits include, “La Vie En Rose”, “What a Wonderful World”, “Star Dust” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me”.

Armstrong was not an overnight success. It was no miracle but his hard work and passion for music that lead to his fame. He was born on August 4, 1901, in the Storyville district of New Orleans to Mary Albert and William Armstrong. His father abandoned the family soon after Louis’s birth and his mother turned to prostitution, leaving the young child with his maternal grandmother. Armstrong grew up in poverty under harsh circumstances where life was tough. He found affection with the Karnoffskys, a Jewish family who not only employed him for delivering coal and several other odd jobs but often invited him for meals and encouraged him to sing. They took him in and he felt at home with them about which he later wrote in a memoir, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907. He had already dropped out of school at the age of eleven and had started getting into trouble dancing and singing on the streets for pennies. Around the same time, he fired a blank shot with his father’s handgun and was sentenced detention to Colored Waif's Home where he honed his cornet playing skills by playing in a band with the other residents. When he was released in 1914, he started looking for work as a musician and eventually found his way.

King Oliver, the then greatest cornet player in New Orleans noticed Louis’s reputation as a fine blues player and took to mentoring him. Over the years, Armstrong became part of several bands (with Oliver and later with Fletcher Henderson later) and all the while he managed to carve a niche for himself with his gravelly voice, relentless passion and unmatched skill with the cornet, he kept the focus on himself. In 1925, Okeh Records let Armstrong make his first records with a band under his own name, “Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five” (which later became the Hot seven). Thus emerged the most influential and significant recordings in the history of jazz which shifted the focus from collective improvisation to individual expression. From 1925-1928, Armstrong recorded more than 60 records including “Cornet Chop Suey”, “Potato Head Blues”. In 1926, Armstrong finally switched from the cornet to the trumpet and soon acquired the title of world’s greatest trumpet player. He was endearingly nick-named Satchmo (short for “satchel mouth”), Satch and Pops (since he took to calling everyone pops if he couldn’t remember/ didn't know their names).

Miles Davis remarked about Armstrong saying that it was impossible to play anything that he [Armstrong] hadn’t already played before. Louis had grown up in an era where schools were segregated on the basis of the color of one’s skin, and when he emerged as the African-American trumpeter; his skin tone didn't seem to matter. His work surpassed his race and won hearts. His larger-than-life personality with his wide smiles had a charm that people loved and adored. Virtually defining the art of jazz solo, his contributions to the industry have had an impact on the later artists like Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and Ella Fitzgerald. He died only a month before his 70th birthday in his sleep due to a heart attack on July 6, 1971, at his home in Queens, New York. He was widely and deeply adored during his lifetime and is still held close to heart with the same reverence.

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