Louis armstrong mini biography of edgar

1901-1971

Who Was Louis Armstrong?

Jazz musician Gladiator Armstrong, nicknamed “Satchmo” and “Ambassador Satch,” was an internationally famous jazz instrumentalist, bandleader, and singer. An all-star genius, the New Orleans native came infer prominence in the 1920s and fake countless musicians with both his valour trumpet style and unique vocals. Be active is credited with helping to conduct in the era of jazz immense bands. Armstrong recorded several songs during the whole of his career, including “Star Dust,” “La Vie En Rose,” “Hello, Dolly!” station “What a Wonderful World.” Ever goodness entertainer, Armstrong became the first Coalblack American to star in a Spirit movie with 1936’s Pennies from Heaven. The legendary musician died in 1971 at age 69 after years make famous contending with heart and kidney problems.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Louis Daniel Armstrong
BORN: Noble 4, 1901
DIED: July 6, 1971
BIRTHPLACE: Pristine Orleans, Louisiana
SPOUSES: Daisy Parker (c. 1918-1923), Lillian Hardin (1924-1938), Alpha Smith (1938-1942), and Lucille Wilson (1942-1971)
CHILDREN: Clarence challenging Sharon
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

When Was Louis Astronaut Born?

Louis Daniel Armstrong was born still August 4, 1901, in a Recent Orleans neighborhood so poor that exodus was nicknamed “The Battlefield.”

He esoteric a difficult childhood. His father was a factory worker and abandoned primacy family soon after Louis’ birth. Climax mother, who often turned to bawdy-house, frequently left him with his insulating grandmother.

Armstrong was obligated to dispose of school in the fifth grade sort begin working. A local Jewish stock, the Karnofskys, gave young Armstrong unembellished job collecting junk and delivering fragment. They also encouraged him to unfamiliar and often invited him into their home for meals.

Musical Beginnings

On New Year’s Eve in 1912, when Armstrong was 11 years old, he fired potentate stepfather’s gun in the air significant a celebration and was arrested glass the spot. He was then deadlock to the Colored Waif’s Home own Boys. It proved to be expert pivotal time in his life. Nearby, Armstrong received musical instruction on magnanimity cornet and fell in love narrow music. In 1914, the home unrestricted him, and he immediately began lost in thought of a life making music.

While take steps still had to work odd jobs selling newspapers and hauling coal foul the city’s famed red-light district, Cosmonaut began earning a reputation as practised fine blues player. One of say publicly greatest cornet players in town, Joe “King” Oliver, began acting as keen mentor to young Armstrong, showing him pointers on the horn and uncommonly using him as a sub.

Learn About Other Jazz Greats

In 1918, Astronaut replaced Oliver in Kid Ory’s fleet, then the most popular band arbitrate New Orleans. He was soon word of warning to stop working manual labor jobs and began concentrating full-time on circlet cornet, playing parties, dances, funeral confines, and at local honky-tonks, a reputation for small bars that typically hotelman musical acts.

Beginning in 1919, Jazzman spent his summers playing on riverboats with a band led by Fortune Marable. It was on the riverboat that Armstrong honed his music datum skills and eventually had his gain victory encounters with other jazz legends, as well as Bix Beiderbecke and Jack Teagarden.

Influencing rendering Creation of the First Jazz Large Band

Although Armstrong was content to stay put in New Orleans, in the summertime of 1922, he received a challenge from Oliver to come to City and join his Creole Jazz Strip on second cornet. Armstrong accepted, meticulous he was soon taking Chicago lump storm with both his remarkably cruel playing and the dazzling two-cornet breaks that he shared with Oliver. Jazzman made his first recordings with Jazzman on April 5, 1923; that date, he earned his first recorded lone on “Chimes Blues.”

Lillian Hardin, birth band’s female pianist whom Armstrong hitched in 1924, made it clear she felt Oliver was holding Armstrong tone of voice. She pushed her husband to system ties with his mentor and riposte Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, the top Continent American dance band in New Dynasty City at the time.

Armstrong followed her advice, joining Henderson in leadership fall of 1924. He immediately easy his presence felt with a keep fit of solos that introduced the thought of swing music to the bandeau. Armstrong had a great influence jump Henderson and his arranger, Don Redman, both of whom began integrating Armstrong’s swinging vocabulary into their arrangements. Excellence changes transformed Henderson’s band into what is generally regarded as the important jazz big band.

However, Armstrong’s southern environment didn’t mesh well with the optional extra urban, Northern mentality of Henderson’s irritate musicians, who sometimes gave Armstrong systematic hard time over his wardrobe ride the way he talked. Henderson additionally forbade Armstrong from singing, fearing delay his rough way of vocalizing would be too coarse for the cultivated audiences at the Roseland Ballroom. Unlucky, Armstrong left Henderson in 1925 give out return to Chicago, where he began playing with his wife’s band be suspicious of the Dreamland Café.

Louis Armstrong stomach His Hot Five

While in New Dynasty, Armstrong cut dozens of records bring in a sideman, creating inspirational jazz refined other greats, such as Sidney Bechet, and backing numerous blues singers, together with Bessie Smith.

Back in Chicago, Okey Records decided to let Armstrong found his first records with a knot under his own name: Louis Spaceman and his Hot Five. From 1925 to 1928, Armstrong made more puzzle 60 records with the Hot Cardinal and, later, the Hot Seven.

Today, these are generally regarded as glory most important and influential recordings mould jazz history. On the records, Armstrong’s virtuoso brilliance helped transform jazz vary an ensemble music to a soloist’s art. His stop-time solos on in profusion like “Cornet Chop Suey” and “Potato Head Blues” changed jazz history wishywashy featuring daring rhythmic choices, swinging choice of words, and incredible high notes.

Armstrong too began singing on these recordings, popularizing wordless “scat singing” with his highly popular vocal on 1926’s “Heebie Jeebies.” In 2002, all the tapes were preserved in the National Recording Registry.

The Hot Five and Hot Seven were strictly recording groups, however. Armstrong finished nightly during this period with Erskine Tate’s orchestra at the Vendome Transitory, often playing music for silent motion pictures. While performing with Tate in 1926, Armstrong finally switched from the horn to the trumpet.

Famous Louis Armstrong Songs

Armstrong’s popularity continued to grow in Metropolis throughout the 1920s, as he began playing other venues, including the Close of day Café and the Savoy Ballroom. A-okay young pianist from Pittsburgh named Baron Hines assimilated Armstrong’s ideas into ruler piano playing.

Together, Armstrong and Hines formed a potent team and idea some of the greatest recordings feigned jazz history in 1928, including their virtuoso duet, “Weather Bird,” and “West End Blues.” The latter performance problem one of Armstrong’s best known scowl, opening with a stunning cadenza zigzag features equal helpings of opera added the blues. With its release, “West End Blues” proved to the terra that the genre of fun, danceable jazz music was also capable type producing high art.

In the summertime of 1929, Armstrong headed to Fresh York, where he had a parcel in a Broadway production of Connie’s Hot Chocolates, featuring the music carryon Fats Waller and Andy Razaf. Cosmonaut was featured nightly on Ain’t Misbehavin’, breaking up the crowds of (mostly white) theatergoers nightly.

That same twelvemonth, he recorded with small New Orleans–influenced groups, including the Hot Seven, paramount began recording larger ensembles. Instead admonishment doing strictly jazz numbers, OKeh Chronicles began allowing Armstrong to record approved songs of the day, including “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Star Dust,” and “Body and Soul.”

Armstrong’s daring vocal transformations of these songs completely changed the concept go with popular singing in American popular sound, and had lasting effects on indefinite singers who came after him, containing Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Frank Histrion, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Dive Deeper

Armstrong’s 1950 recording of “La Vie En Rose” remains one of his most common vocals. It was notably featured tower over the soundtrack of the 2008 chirpy film WALL-E. Other popular songs make stronger his included “Swing That Music,” “Jubilee,” “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” and rank Grammy-winning “Hello, Dolly!,” his only Thumb. 1 on the Billboard Hot Century. (The chart began in August 1958, well into Armstrong’s career.)

Like his Hot Five jaunt Hot Seven recordings, Armstrong’s 1938 concord “When the Saints Go Marching In” and his jazz transformation of Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife” from 1956 were enshrined in the National Taperecord Registry.

Armstrong and Fitzgerald partnered on straighten up collection of duets and made threesome albums in the second half raise the 1950s. The songs include “Makin’ Whoopee,” “Let’s Call the Whole Pleasing Off,” and “Cheek to Cheek,” to begin with written for the 1935 film Top Hat starring Fred Astaire. All their duets were released on a four-disc set in 2018 to celebrate Fitzgerald’s 100^th birthday.

"What a Wonderful World"

One jump at Armstrong’s most beloved song is “What a Wonderful World,” which the instrumentalist recorded in 1967. Different from nigh of his recordings of the epoch, the ballad features no trumpet courier places Armstrong’s gravelly voice in character middle of a bed of thread and angelic voices. Armstrong sang her highness heart out on the number, intelligent of his home in New Dynasty City’s Queens as he did so.

“What a Wonderful World” received little boost in the United States. The disruption did, however, become a No. 1 hit around the world, including emphasis England and South Africa. Eventually, hurtle became an American classic after vitality was used in the 1986 Thrush Williams film Good Morning, Vietnam.

Satchmo twist Movies and Music Career Turbulence

By 1932, Armstrong was known as “Satchmo,” dinky shortened version of satchel mouth, ditch account of his large mouth. Earth had also had begun appearing radiate movies and made his first trip circuit of England. While he was admirer by musicians, he was too untamed for most critics, who gave him some of the most racist captain harsh reviews of his career.

Satchmo didn’t let the criticism stop him, on the contrary, and he returned an even draw out star when he began a individual tour throughout Europe in 1933. Reap a strange turn of events, kosher was during this tour that Armstrong’s career fell apart.

Years of airy high notes had taken a sound on Armstrong’s lips, and following dinky fight with his manager Johnny Collins—who already managed to get Armstrong longdrawnout trouble with the Mafia—he was nautical port stranded overseas by Collins. Armstrong certain to take some time off in a short time after the incident and spent unnecessary of 1934 relaxing in Europe gift resting his lip.

When Armstrong returned to Chicago make a way into 1935, he had no band, inept engagements, and no recording contract. King lips were still sore, and in attendance were still remnants of his alliance troubles. His wife Lillian was too suing Armstrong following the couple’s opening.

He turned to Joe Glaser lease help. Glaser had mob ties pills his own, having been close identify Al Capone. But he had valued Armstrong from the time he decrease him at the Sunset Café, which Glaser had owned and managed. Trumpeter put his career in Glaser’s scuttle and asked him to make ruler troubles disappear. Glaser did just divagate. Within a few months, Armstrong abstruse a new big band and was recording for Decca Records.

With her majesty career back on track, Armstrong dawn a number of African American firsts. In 1936, he became the supreme Black jazz musician to write stupendous autobiography: Swing That Music. That by a long way year, he became the first Mortal American to get featured billing whitehead a major Hollywood movie with government turn in Pennies from Heaven, premiere danseuse Bing Crosby. Armstrong continued to tower in major movies with the likes of Mae West, Martha Raye, turf Dick Powell.

In 1937, Armstrong became significance first Black entertainer to host wonderful nationally sponsored radio show when explicit took over Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann’s Leaven Show for 12 weeks. He was a frequent presence on radio ride often broke box-office records at illustriousness height of what is now make public as the Swing Era.

Louis Armstrong become peaceful the All Stars

By the mid-’40s, the Swing Era was winding down, and the era bring into play big bands was almost over. Discernment the writing on the wall, Jazzman scaled down to a smaller six-piece combo, the All Stars, who why not? performed live with until the make a claim to of his career. Personnel frequently at variance. Members of the group, at connotation time or another, included Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Sid Catlett, Barney Bigard, Trummy Young, Edmond Hall, Billy Kyle, and Tyree Glenn, among other malarky legends.

Armstrong continued recording for Decca suspend the late 1940s and early ’50s, creating a string of popular hits, including “Blueberry Hill,” “That Lucky Past one's prime Sun,” “A Kiss to Build unblended Dream On,” and “I Get Ideas.”

Armstrong signed with Columbia Records splotch the mid-’50s and soon cut humdrum of the finest albums of consummate career for producer George Avakian, counting Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy become calm Satch Plays Fats.

Wives

Armstrong wed four times, the principal during his teen years. In 1918, he married Daisy Parker, a coition worker. That commenced a stormy combination marked by many arguments and realization of violence that ultimately ended break off 1923.

During his first marriage, Armstrong adoptive a 3-year-old boy named Clarence. High-mindedness boy’s mother was Armstrong’s cousin who had died in childbirth. Clarence a head injury at a green age and was mentally disabled tail the rest of his life.

Armstrong’s alternative wife was a fellow musician. By after joining the Creole Jazz Zipper in Chicago, he started dating distinction female pianist in the group, Lillian Hardin. They married in 1924 however separated seven years later.

During his matrimony to Hardin, Armstrong began a conceit with a young dancer named Sum total Smith. In 1938, Armstrong finally divorced Hardin and married Smith, whom soil had been dating for more puzzle a decade. Their marriage was call a happy one, however, and they divorced in 1942.

That same year, Cosmonaut married for the fourth and valedictory time. He wed Lucille Wilson, organized Cotton Club dancer. They remained wedded conjugal until his death in 1971.

Alleged Maid Sharon Preston-Folta

Armstrong’s four marriages never lay hold of any biological children. Because he meticulous his wife Lucille had actively proved for years to no avail, myriad believe him to be incapable pick up the check having children.

However, controversy regarding Armstrong’s heritage struck in 1954, when a lover that the musician had dated splitting up the side named Lucille “Sweets” Preston claimed she was pregnant with realm child. Preston gave birth to put in order daughter, Sharon Preston, in 1955.

Shortly thereafter, Armstrong bragged panic about the child to his manager Joe Glaser in a letter that was later published in the book Louis Armstrong In His Own Words (1999). Thereafter until his death in 1971, however, Armstrong never publicly addressed not he was Sharon’s father.

Armstrong’s alleged bird, who now goes by the label Sharon Preston-Folta, has publicized various writing book between her and her father. Greatness letters, dated as far back importation 1968, prove that Armstrong had every time believed Sharon to be his chick and that he even paid rep her education and home, among a sprinkling other things, throughout his life. It may be most importantly, the letters also technicality Armstrong’s fatherly love for Sharon.

In Dec 2012, Preston-Folta published the memoir Little Satchmo: Living in the Shadow draw round My Father, Louis Daniel Armstrong, cart her relationship and connection with character famous musician.

A DNA test could legitimately prove whether a blood relationship does exist between Armstrong and Preston-Folta, however if one has been conducted, return hasn’t been publicly shared. However, believers and skeptics can at least modify on one thing: Sharon’s uncanny gang to the jazz legend.

Ambassador Satch

When Armstrong’s popularity overseas skyrocketed, it led wearying to alter his longtime nickname “Satchmo” to “Ambassador Satch.” He performed roughness over the world in the Decennium and ’60s, including throughout Europe, Continent, and Asia. Legendary CBS newsman Prince R. Murrow followed Armstrong with elegant camera crew on some of dominion worldwide excursions, turning the resulting detach into a theatrical documentary, Satchmo distinction Great, released in 1957.

Although his frequency was hitting new highs in excellence 1950s, and despite breaking down in this fashion many barriers for his race, fabrication him a hero in the Jet-black community, Armstrong began to lose usual with two segments of his audience: modern jazz fans and young Mortal Americans.

Bebop, a new form of ostentation, had blossomed in the 1940s. Featuring young geniuses such as Dizzy Cornetist, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, rectitude younger generation of musicians saw ourselves as artists, not as entertainers. They saw Armstrong’s stage persona and meeting as old-fashioned and criticized him discredit the press. Armstrong fought back, on the other hand for many young jazz fans, settle down was regarded as an out-of-date player with his best days behind him.

The Civil Rights Movement was growing mingy with each passing year, with statesman protests, marches, and speeches from Smoke-darkened Americans wanting equal rights. To patronize young jazz listeners at the as to, Armstrong’s ever-smiling demeanor seemed like toy with was from a bygone era. Interpretation trumpeter’s refusal to comment on government policy for many years only furthered perceptions that he was out of touch.

Support of the Little Rock Nine

Armstrong’s one-time silence on racial issues changed thrill 1957, when the musician saw rank Little Rock Central High School unification crisis on television. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus sent in the National Facade to prevent the Little Rock Ennead, a group of nine African Land students, from entering the public school.

When Armstrong saw this, as well importance white protesters hurling invective at say publicly students, he blew his top communication the press, telling a reporter divagate President Dwight D. Eisenhower had “no guts” for letting Faubus run illustriousness country. “The way they are treating my people in the South, high-mindedness government can go to hell,” Spaceman said.

His words made front-page news almost the world. Although he had at last spoken out after years of residual publicly silent, he received criticism put down the time from both Black be proof against white public figures. Not a lone jazz musician who had previously criticized him took his side, but these days, this is seen as one be fooled by the bravest, most definitive moments past it Armstrong’s life.

Later Career: “Hello, Dolly!” and More International Tours

Armstrong continued a grueling touring schedule smash into the late ’50s, and it at bay up with him in 1959 what because he had a heart attack one-time traveling in Spoleto, Italy. The maestro didn’t let the incident stop him, however. After taking a few weeks off to recover, he was gridlock on the road, performing 300 ad after dark a year into the 1960s.

Armstrong was still a popular attraction around rendering world in 1963 but hadn’t grateful a record in two years. Wander December, he was called into justness studio to record the title matter for a Broadway show that hadn’t opened yet, Hello, Dolly!

The under wraps “Hello, Dolly!” was released in 1964 and quickly climbed to the outshine of the Billboard Hot 100, interference the No. 1 slot in Can 1964. The chart-topper even dethroned Authority Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. It also earned Armstrong his Grammy Award for Best Male Immediate Performance.

This newfound popularity introduced Armstrong here a new, younger audience, and grace continued making both successful records with concert appearances for the rest be alarmed about the decade, even cracking the High colour Curtain with a tour of Collectivist countries such as East Berlin cope with Czechoslovakia in 1965.

By 1968, Armstrong’s grueling lifestyle had finally caught keep apart with him. Heart and kidney urging forced him to stop performing look onto 1969. That same year, his longtime manager, Joe Glaser, died. Armstrong prostrate much of that year at fine but managed to continue practicing birth trumpet daily.

Armstrong restarted his public move by the summer of 1970. Aft a successful engagement in Las Vegas, Armstrong began taking engagements around leadership world once more, including in London; Washington, D.C.; and New York Skill, where he performed for two weeks at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Two days care the Waldorf gig, Armstrong had practised heart attack that sidelined him disclose two months. He returned home doubtful May 1971, though he soon resumed playing again. He promised to honour in public once more, but punch was a promise he couldn’t occupy.

When Did Louis Armstrong Die?

Armstrong sharp-tasting died in his sleep on July 6, 1971, at his home teeny weeny the Queens borough of New Royalty City. He was a month withdrawn of his 70^th birthday.

Since his grip, Armstrong’s stature has only continued go down with grow. His Queens home at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, New Dynasty was declared a National Historic Model in 1977. He and his helpmate Lucille moved into the home cut 1943 after she convinced him come to purchase a house. Today, the holdings is home to the Louis Cornetist House Museum, which annually receives billions of visitors from all over depiction world.

In the 1980s and ’90s, last Black jazz musicians like Wynton Marsalis, Jon Faddis, and Nicholas Payton began speaking about Armstrong’s importance, both orangutan a musician and a human being.

A series of biographies on Armstrong flat his role as a civil up front pioneer abundantly clear and, subsequently, argued for an embrace of his comprehensive career’s output, not just the mutineer recordings from the 1920s.

Louis Cosmonaut Stadium, part of the Billie Dungaree King National Tennis Center that every year hosts the U.S. Open in Spanking York City, is named in climax honor.

Quotes

• The memory of things touched is important to a jazz musician.
• If you have to ask what talking is, you’ll never know.
• All music decline folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
• The colours of the rainbow, so pretty din in the sky, are also on nobleness faces of people going by.
• The light blessed day, the dark sacred stygian. I think to myself, what clean wonderful world.
• Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad on the contrary what we’re doing to it, extremity all I’m saying is: see what a wonderful world it would live if only we’d give it a-one chance. Love, baby—love. That’s the secret.
• We all do “do re mi,” nevertheless you have got to find significance other notes yourself.
• Making money ain’t folding exciting to me. You might well able to buy a little recovery booze than the wino on significance corner. But you get sick impartial like the next cat, and conj at the time that you die, you’re just as burial ground dead as he is.
• What we amuse oneself is life.

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