Nicknamed ‘Satchmo’ by fellow musicians because of his wide smile, Louis Daniel Armstrong was perhaps the greatest and most influential jazz trumpeter and musician of all time.
Born on the 4th August 1901, (in fact the same year that Queen Victoria died), in the Storyville, District, New Orleans, Louisiana in an over crowded ghetto, populated by hoodlums and thugs and locally known as the ‘battlefield’. His father, William Armstrong left home when he was five and he and his younger sister was brought up by his mother, and grandmother. In an effort to support her children and make ends meet, Mary Ann Armstrong took the only option opened to a poorly educated and abandoned wife to care for her children and became a part-time prostitute.
Needless to say, the family was desperately poor and his only option was to steal to survive. At the age of twelve years, as a result of youthful exuberance, he borrowed a pistol and fired it into the air to celebrate the arrival of the New Year in 1913. His action was witnessed by a policeman who arrested him and eventually he was incarcerated in a home for wayward coloured boys, where he served a two year sentence. Were it not for that incident, the world might never have known the greatness of Louis Armstrong.
It was whilst he was incarcerated that he came into contact with the musical instructor, professor Peter Davis, an employee at the home. Davis spotted his talent and began giving him lessons in singing and playing the trumpet. When he was released two years later he sought to change his life by choosing not returning to his former pattern of behaviour and decided to took another route.
He took odd jobs to support himself and haunted the bars and jazz clubs, which could be found everywhere in Storyville to listen to the most popular jazz artists of the day. There he encountered the likes of Joe ‘King’ Oliver who played in the ‘Kid Ory band’ and others, some of whom befriended and mentored him, virtually taking over from where Peter Davis had left off. They allowed him to play with them and by the time he was seventeen he had played with several of the most prominent bands in his locality.
At age seventeen he married for the first time to Daisy Parker, they adopted a child called Clarence Armstrong a 3 year old relative with learning difficulties, whose mother died after giving birth to him. Louis' marriage to Daisy was short lived and ended in divorce. He was to marry a further three times and the his last of his wives was Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club in Harlem.
In 1919, when he was eighteen years old. Louis moved to St. Louis to join the ‘Fate Marables band’, who was contracted to played on the paddle-wheeler, which travelled up and down the Mississippi river. There he was able to hone his skills, improve his playing abilities and learn to read music. During this time Joe ‘King’ Oliver left the 'Kid Ory band' and moved to Chicago to form his own band. As a result Louis left the paddle-wheelers and returned to Storyville to take Joe ‘King’ Oliver’s place in Kid Ory’s band.
Three years later Joe ‘King’ Oliver sent for Louis to join him in Chicago to play in a band he had recently formulated and called ‘Creole jazz band’. In 1925 Louis formed a band called the ‘Hot Five’ to cut his first record. Later ‘Hot Five’ became the ‘Hot Seven’. The band never played together live, but only grouped for the purpose of cutting records and in the interim, Louis made his living by continuing to play in other bands and toured with vaudeville shows such as ‘Hot Chocolate’.
By 1929 his star was undeniably on the rise and he formulated his own group which he called ‘Louis Armstrong and the Stompers’ which had a good measure of success. However, as the 1920’s ebbed away and the 1930’s matured, the swing era was hotly en vogue and the big bands were all the rage.
Louis decided to move to Los Angel es and organised his own big band, which he gave the mouthful of a name by calling it ‘Louis Armstrong and his Sebastian New Cotton Club Orchestra’. It was around this time that his second marriage to Lillian Hardin broke down and they eventually divorced. This of course left him free to pursue his career without any family distractions.
After his divorce, he travelled to Chicago to organise a touring band and visited places where he was well known and respected, such as New Orleans where he received the heartiest of welcomes. However, racism in America was everywhere, much like the very air they breathed at the time. Not surprising then, that it was alleged that a local radio announcer refused to mention his name on his radio show, simply because he was black.
In spite of the bigotry and other obstacles he encountered, the band went from strength to strength and enjoyed enormous success, not only in the US and Europe but also in Australia, Japan, South America and Africa where he played in a concert to celebrate Ghana’s Independence, an event that was attended by over 100,000 adoring fans.
As World War II came to an end, the swing era began to decline and smaller ensembles were again in fashion. In keeping with the times, Louis dismantled his large orchestra and formulated a small six piece band which he first introduced at a town hall concert in New York. This line up he would use on and off for the remainder of his life.
Louis Armstrong teamed up with several big recording artists during his career such as Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Louis Jordan and Tommy Dorsey to name a few. He also made many memorable recordings starting with his first big hit in the 50’s, ‘Mack the Knife’ followed by ‘Hello Dolly’ and ‘What a Wonderful World’, all of which are still as fresh to the ears as when they were first recorded and released. He also appeared in a number of films the best known of which was the documentary made in 1957 called ‘Satchmo the Great’.
Towards the end of his life Louis Armstrong was plagued by ill-health and spent the last three years of his life in and out of hospital suffering from heart disease. However, through it all he continued to work, doing what he undoubtedly loved best and on the 6th July, 1971 aged seventy he passes away at his home in Queens, in his sleep and at that precise moment the world lost the greatest jazz musician the they had ever known.