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Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 19011 - July 6, 1971) (also known by the nickname Satchmo) was an African American jazz musician. Initially, he was a trumpeter, but towards the end of his career became better known as a singer. Probably the most famous jazz musician of the 20th century, Armstrong was a charismatic, innovative performer whose musical skills and bright personality transformed jazz from barrelhouse dance music into a popular art form.

Life

Armstrong was born to a poor family in New Orleans. His youth was spent in poverty in a rough neighborhood of uptown New Orleans. He first learned to play cornet (a trumpetlike instrument, pitched the same, but more tightly coiled hence shorter overall, popular with New Orleans musicians) in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs where he had been sent after firing a pistol at a New Year's Eve celebration. He followed brass band parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, and above all King Joe Oliver, who acted as a mentor and almost a father figure to young Armstrong. Armstrong later played in the brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and first started traveling with the well regarded band of Fate Marable which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River; he described his time with Marable as going to the University since it gave him a much wider experience working with written arrangements. When Joe Oliver left town in 1919, Armstrong took Oliver's place in Kid Ory's band, regarded as the top hot jazz band in the city.

In 1922, Armstrong joined the exodus to Chicago, where he had been invited by Joe King Oliver to join his Creole Jazz Band. Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz band in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of jazz

Armstrong was happy working with Oliver, but his wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, urged him to seek more prominent billing. He and Oliver parted amicably in 1924 and Armstrong moved on to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African American band of the day, at which point Armonstrong switched to the trumpet Orchestra to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. During this time, he also made many recordings on the side arranged by his old friend from New Orleans pianist Clarence Williams. He returned to Chicago in 1925 and began recording under his own name with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven with such hits as Potato Head Blues, Muggles (a reference to marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness), and West End Blues which music set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come.

Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, then moved to Los Angeles in 1930, then toured Europe. After spending many years on the road, he settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, he continued to develop his playing. During the subsequent thirty years, Armstrong played more than three hundred gigs a year. Most of his touring after the late 1940s was with a small stable group called the All Stars, which included Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Trummy Young, and Barrett Deems. During this period, He made many recordings; he also appeared in over thirty films.

Armstrong kept up his busy tour schedule until a few years before his death. While in his later years, he would sometimes play some of his numerous gigs mechanically, other times he would enliven the most mundane gig with his vigorous playing to the astonishment of his band. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department with great success and become known as Ambassador Satch.

Armstrong died of a heart attack in 1971 at age 69. He was interred in the Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, New York.

Music

In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. The greatest trumpet playing of his early years can be heard on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records. The improvisations which he made on these records of New Orleans jazz standards and popular songs of the day, to the present time stack up brilliantly alongside those of any other later jazz performer. They are filled with joyous, inspired original melodies, creative leaps, and subtle relaxed or driving rhythms. The genius of these creative passages is matched by Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice, which extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In these records, Armstrong almost singlehandedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what was essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.

As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it. He had a hit with his playing and scat singing on Heebie Jeebies, and sang out I done forgot the words in the middle of recording I'm A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas. Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet.

During his long career he played and sang with the most important instrumentalists and vocalists; among the many, singing brakeman Jimmie Rodgers, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Bessie Smith, and notably with Ella Fitzgerald. Armstrong recorded three albums with Fitzgerald: Ella & Louis, Ella & Louis again, and Porgy and Bess for Verve Records. His recordings Satch Plays Fats, all Fats Waller tunes, and Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy in the 1950s were perhaps the last of his great creative recordings, but even oddities like Disney Songs the Satchmo Way have their musical moments.

Armstrong had many hit records including Stardust, What a Wonderful World, When the Saints Go Marchin' In, Dream a Little Dream of Me, Ain't Misbehavin', and Stompin' at the Savoy. He briefly knocked the Beatles off the top of the hits charts with Hello, Dolly. In 1968, Armstrong had one last popular hit with the highly sentimental pop song What A Wonderful World. (The song gained further currency in the popular consciousness when it was used in the 1987 movie Good Morning Vietnam, its subsequent rerelease topping the charts around the world. Oddly, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the song was one of about 150 that radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications recommended to be pulled from airplay.)

Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from the most earthy blues to the syrupy sweet arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. Armstrong incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted Armstrong to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of Saint Louis Blues from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.

Armstrong's Legacy

The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable, but his irrepressible personality both as a performer, and later in his career as a public figure, was so strong that to some it overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.

As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.

As vocalist, Armstrong is considered to have essentially invented jazz singing. He had a distinct, gravelly voice, which he deployed with great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, or wordless vocalizing. Before Armstrong, singers simply sang the song; after him, they were free to put their own stamp on it.

As an actor Armstrong had a number of supporting roles in Hollywood films, and was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show.

Many of Armstrong's recordings remain popular, and decades after his death a larger number of his recordings, from all years of his career, are in print than at any time in his life. His 1923 recordings with Joe King Oliver amd his Creole Jazz Band continue to be listened to as documents of ensemble style New Orleans jazz. All too often, however, Armstrong recorded with stiff, standard orchestras leaving only his sublime trumpet playing as of interest.

Melancholy Blues, performed by Armstrong and his Hot Seven was included on the Voyager Golden Record sent into outer space to represent one of the greatest achievements of humanity.

The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana and serving New Orleans, Louisiana, is named after Armstrong. Also, the secondary stadium court at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, the site of the US Open, is named for him.

He set up a non-profit foundation for educating disadvantaged children in music, and deeded his house and substantial archives of writings, books, recordings, and memorabilia to go to Queens College, New York after the deaths of himself and his wife Lucille. The Louis Armstrong archives have been available to music researchers, and his home in Corona, Queens opened to the public as a museum on 15 October, 2003