(Daniel) Louis
Armstrong
August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971
Cornet, Trumpet, Singer
By virtue of the role he played in its evolution during the first quarter of the
20th century, Louis Armstrong is regarded as the most influential jazz musician
in history. This distinction is coupled with his stewardship of jazz around the
world over the next five decades as the earliest and greatest ambassador of
America's first true musical art form.
With the liberating effects of the Jazz Age reverberating on world culture since
the 1930s, Satchmo's contributions to society are now measured alongside those
of the greatest artists, philosophers and statesmen of the modern era. In the
year 2000, we celebrate the centennial of his birth on July 4, 1900 - a date
that Louis took with him throughout his life. While historical evidence
discovered nearly two decades after his 1971 death suggested a different birth
date, there has never been any conclusive reason to dispute Pops' own c.v.
Vital and productive from the 1920s to the 1960s, Louis Armstrong provided jazz
with its quantum leap forward - his Hot Five and Hot Seven group recordings for
the OKeh Records label between 1925 and 1928. They were the culmination of all
he had accomplished in music to that point. Born in abject poverty in the worst
black slum in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, his father was a workman and his
mother a maid and prostitute. Louis and his younger sister roamed the red light
district of Storyville, until his delinquency landed him in the Colored Waifs
Home around age 12. In the institution's band he learned several instruments,
eventually settling on cornet.
As a teenager with his sights set on becoming a musician, he worked odd jobs
while playing in a variety of bands. His repertoire of songs grew under the
influence of renowned cornetist Joe 'King' Oliver (himself a contemporary of
Bunk Johnson), and Louis' own profile blossomed. When Oliver left for Chicago
around 1919, Louis took his place in Kid Ory's band and started traveling
widely. He worked on trains and riverboats as well as in local clubs in bands
led by Ory, Fate Marable, and Zutty Singleton, and in street parade groups such
as Papa Celestin's Tuxedo Band.
Armstrong joined Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in 1922, playing for mixed
black and white audiences at the famed Lincoln Gardens ballroom. They made their
first recordings together in 1923 (for the OKeh, Columbia and Gennett labels),
with a combo that included (most of the) future members of the Hot Five and Hot
Seven. Among them were Oliver's pianist Lillian Hardin, whom Armstrong wed in
'24 (his second of four wives). It was Lil who convinced Louis to move to New
York that year, to join Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra.
By 1925, astute fans heard Armstrong's cornet on recordings done in New York and
Chicago with Henderson, blues singers Ma Rainey and Clara Smith, Clarence
Williams' Blue Five on OKeh, and Bessie Smith on Columbia. OKeh noticed certain
Williams discs selling better than others, the ones featuring Armstrong's
uncredited playing, and signed him to an exclusive contract in the fall of 1925.
In the image of the Blue Five, OKeh began recording Louis Armstrong and His Hot
Five in Chicago: Louis Armstrong (cornet and later trumpet, vocals), Kid Ory
(trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet, occasional alto saxophone), Lillian Hardin
Armstrong (piano, occasional vocals), and Johnny St. Cyr (banjo). The Hot Seven
'experiment' took place in 1927, when the Five's spare and awkward two piece
rhythm section was augmented by Baby Dodds on drums and Pete Briggs on tuba.
The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, the recently-issued
Columbia/Legacy 4-CD box-set, not only chronicles the 60-plus seminal OKeh
recordings of November 1925 to December 1928, but also includes some 30 sides of
historic attendant material recorded (primarily) with the same musicians during
the same period, though frequently under different group monikers, even on
different labels. From the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens era, in which the music
moved away from collective group playing and developed a new emphasis on
individual solo improvisation, came such hits as "Heebie Jeebies,"
"Muskrat Ramble," "Big Butter And Egg Man," "Struttin
With Some Barbecue," "Cornet Chop Suey," "Willie The
Weeper," "S.O.L. Blues," "Potato Head Blues,"
"West End Blues," and many more.
By early 1929, Louis had graduated to pop star status, recording standards and
Tin Pan Alley hits with his orchestra or various big bands. He popularized such
numbers as "Tiger Rag," "Shine," "The Peanut
Vendor," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," and
"Stardust." Louis was brought back to New York to star in the Fats
Waller/Andy Razaf Broadway revue, Hot Chocolates; "Ain't Misbehavin'"
became the first of many Armstrong jukebox hits. His broad appeal led to
recording with hillbilly star Jimmie Rodgers on the West Coast; and in 1932 and
'34, Louis traveled to Europe for wildly successful tours. A consummate showman
with comedic flair, he often performed 365 nights in a row during the '30s. He
only rested when he began to sense the chronic lip problem from which he
suffered over the next three decades, because he never acquired the proper
embouchure.
Life-long manager Joe Glaser took over Satchmo's career in 1935, and immediately
negotiated a contract with Decca Records. Louis' pop profile was strengthened as
a result of records with fellow Decca artists the Mills Brothers, Louis Jordan,
Tommy Dorsey, and Ella Fitzgerald. The following year ('36) he made his
Hollywood debut in Pennies From Heaven, co-starring Bing Crosby, who
became another duet partner. Louis went on to make over 50 films, including Cabin
In the Sky (1943), High Society (1956), The Five Pennies
starring Danny Kaye as jazzman Red Nichols, and of course, Hello, Dolly!
(1969) with Barbra Streisand.
After World War II put the skids on the big band era, Louis and many others cast
about for a new direction. A Carnegie Hall small combo date with Jack Teagarden
and other veterans provided the solution. It was such a critical and commercial
success that the 'All-Stars' (with varying line-ups over the next two decades)
became Armstrong's regular touring and recording unit. The familiar '50s lineup
was featured on such Columbia LPs as Satch Plays Fats, Ambassador
Satch, and Satchmo the Great: Armstrong on trumpet and vocals, singer
Velma Middleton, Trummy Young on trombone, Edmond Hall on clarinet, Billy Kyle
on piano, bassist Arvell Shaw, and drummer Barrett Deems.
Louis' ability to generate 'top 40' hits in every generation is one of the
marvels of his career: "Blueberry Hill" (with Gordon Jenkins) in 1949,
"Mack The Knife" (from Brecht-Weill's Threepenny Opera) in
1956, and the original "Hello, Dolly!" which unseated the Beatles'
"Can't Buy Me Love" from #1 in May 1964 - to name a few. In 1988, 17
years after his death, Armstrong's "What AWonderful World" was bigger
than ever as a top 40 single from Robin Williams' Good Morning, Vietnam
movie soundtrack.
Louis Armstrong demolished social barriers with the same offhanded grace that he
brought to countless U.S. State Department-sponsored tours of foreign countries,
especially Africa and Europe. Those who criticized his showbiz posturing were
humbled by his outspoken views on Civil Rights issues, going back to the
Eisenhower era of the '50s. Though sidelined by a heart attack in 1959, and
perennially plagued by his lip problem, Pops nevertheless performed in concert
and appeared on television and in film as much as health allowed, up until his
death in New York on July 6, 1971. His influence - not only on every trumpet
player from Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie to Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and
beyond, but also on jazz, blues, and pop musicians across the musical spectrum -
is not likely to be equaled in our lifetime.
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