Louis Armstrong
If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- FamilyMayann Armstrong
Raised her son alone and endured poverty.
- MentorKing Oliver
Taught him the cornet and called him to Chicago.
- FamilyLil Hardin Armstrong
Pianist and wife, she pushed him toward independence.
- ColleagueBessie Smith
Answered on cornet in “St. Louis Blues.”
- RivalrySidney Bechet
They are said to have dueled in improvisation at New York sessions.
- BackingJoe Glaser
As his lifelong manager, he took charge of all his business affairs.
I. A child of New Orleans · 1901–1913 (age 0–12)
(New Orleans) He was born in August 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His birthplace was Jane Alley, a back street in the heart of the city, and nearby lay Storyville, the red-light district, so that every night the sound of pianos and cornets drifted out into the alleys. He liked to claim July 4, Independence Day, as his birthday, but his baptismal record points to August 4, and scholars have yet to settle the exact date. (Mother) His mother, Mayann, supported the family alone by keeping house for others, while his father, William Armstrong, left soon after his birth and seldom showed his face again. He spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother Josephine, and his sister Beatrice, two years younger, would later be known as Mama Lucy. In his memoirs he wrote of the poverty of those years plainly and without shame. (Streets) From around the age of ten he sold newspapers and coal in the alleys, and in his spare time he formed a street quartet with other boys, making the rounds of saloons and pleasure districts for coins. His greatest joy was following funeral processions to hear the brass bands, and the contrast peculiar to New Orleans funeral music, between slow dirges and the jubilant marches that followed, later became the archetype of the emotional range in his playing, moving between sorrow and vitality.
II. From the waifs' home to the cornet · 1913–1922 (age 12–21)
(Waifs' home) On the night of December 31, 1912, after firing a pistol to ring in the New Year, he was sent to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys, an institution for Black youths. There he first learned the cornet from the music teacher Peter Davis, and before long he was leading the home's brass band, his first taste of leadership. He would later name this period the most important turning point of his life. (King Oliver) Released in 1914, he drove a coal wagon by day and made the rounds of clubs by night, earning his living on the cornet. King Oliver, who led one of the best-known bands in New Orleans, took notice of his playing and offered to teach him, reportedly treating him like a son. When Oliver left for Chicago, he inherited Oliver's chair in Kid Ory's band and first made his name in the New Orleans music world. (Marriage and riverboats) Around 1918 he married Daisy Parker, but frequent quarrels meant it did not last. During this period he joined Fate Marable's band on Mississippi riverboats and learned to read music for the first time; formal training, added to the New Orleans style he had picked up by ear, gave him a much firmer musical foundation. In 1922 King Oliver, now settled in Chicago, at last sent for him.
III. Chicago and the Hot Five · 1922–1929 (age 21–28)
(Chicago) In 1922 he joined King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band as second cornet and settled in Chicago. The band's pianist, Lil Hardin, recognized his talent at once, but his mentor Oliver wanted to keep him in his own shadow. Lil urged him to strike out on his own, and the two married in 1924. (New York and peers) That same year he moved to New York to play with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, and at Clarence Williams's sessions he played alongside Sidney Bechet; the story goes that the two improvisers dueled without either giving ground. In 1925 he took part in Bessie Smith's recording of “St. Louis Blues,” answering her voice with his cornet. The following year he returned to Chicago and formed a band under his own name. (Hot Five) Beginning in 1925, in a series of records cut as the Hot Five and the Hot Seven, he moved beyond the ensemble-centered New Orleans style and established a new framework for jazz in which the soloist leads the tune. The anecdote that he dropped his lyric sheet while recording “Heebie Jeebies” and improvised nonsense syllables is told as the origin myth of scat singing. The unaccompanied introduction to “West End Blues,” recorded in 1928, is credited with opening the era of the jazz soloist.
A record of the years when, as second-in-command in King Oliver's band, he traded cornet lines with his mentor and displayed the essence of New Orleans ensemble playing.
- In the two-cornet breaks traded with King Oliver (short passages that dart in and out without a full solo), teacher and pupil lock together with precision.
- Clarinet and trombone lay their own separate lines beneath the cornet melody at once, a collective improvisation (polyphony) typical of early New Orleans jazz.
- The recording is rough, but you can already hear the clear tone of Armstrong, who was twenty-two when he cut it.
Answering the voice of Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, with his cornet, he lets two artists carry on a dialogue, each returning the other's feeling.
- Each time Bessie Smith finishes a line, Armstrong's cornet slips in with a short reply (call and response), so that the song unfolds like a conversation.
- Over a harmonium (a keyboard instrument with an organlike sound) accompaniment, the twelve-bar blues form repeats slow and heavy, creating a mournful atmosphere.
- Instead of dazzling technique, Armstrong shows an accompanist's restraint, leaving room for the singer's feeling with each measured note.
A recording credited with opening the era of the jazz soloist through its unaccompanied trumpet cadenza alone.
- The introduction that begins alone, without accompaniment (cadenza), is often cited as the benchmark for all jazz soloing to come.
- Midway through, the scat passage, sung in syllables without words, so closely resembles the trumpet's tone that the two are nearly indistinguishable.
- In the final chorus a single long-held high note pushes the emotion of the whole piece to its peak before slowly settling back down.
IV. The rise and Joe Glaser · 1929–1938 (age 28–37)
(Big band) After 1929 he led a large orchestra in New York and broadened his popular appeal by recasting Broadway hits as jazz. Pushing too hard into the trumpet's upper register left his lips repeatedly scarred, and at times the damage grew serious enough that he had to stop playing for a while. This punishing playing was the physical price he paid, caught between popularity and artistry. (Glaser) Caught up in disputes among managers tangled with Chicago gangsters, he took on Joe Glaser as his new manager in 1935. Glaser took a large share of the contracts but went on to manage his business steadily for the rest of his life, and the two are said to have kept their bond of trust until death. (Europe and divorce) To escape pressure from the gangsters, from 1933 he toured across Europe and was greeted warmly in Britain and France. By then his marriage to Lil Hardin was effectively over; they formally divorced in 1938, and he soon married Alpha Smith.
The song that opened a new career for him as an interpreter of popular song, recasting a Broadway hit as jazz.
- Over the accompaniment of a large orchestra, trumpet and voice take turns varying the melody, dissolving the line between singing and playing.
- Rather than leaving the original melody as written, he pushes and pulls the beat as he sings (swing), showing how a popular song becomes jazz.
- The long-held high notes in the trumpet solo were played at the risk of the lip injuries that recurred in this period.
V. Lucille and the war years · 1938–1947 (age 37–46)
(Lucille) In 1942 he divorced Alpha Smith and married Lucille Wilson, a former Cotton Club dancer. They had no children of their own, but Lucille became a steady companion who stayed by his side for the rest of his life. (Hollywood) Leading his big band, he appeared in one Hollywood film after another, greatly expanding his public recognition. Some critics regretted an image that cast him less as a trumpeter than as an entertainer selling laughs, but he himself was never ashamed of closing the distance between himself and the public. (War) During World War II he performed for the troops, playing separately before racially segregated units. When the war ended and the era of the swing big bands faded, keeping a large orchestra became more and more of a financial burden.
VI. The All Stars and Little Rock · 1947–1957 (age 46–56)
(All Stars) In 1947 he disbanded his big band and formed a small group, Louis Armstrong and His All Stars, returning to the ensemble playing of his New Orleans days. This lineup became the foundation that sustained his music for the rest of his career. (Touring) During the Cold War he went on tours abroad sponsored by the U.S. government, traveling across Africa and Europe and earning the nickname Ambassador Satch. Even as he represented his country and built goodwill, at home he still had to face the wall of segregation. (Little Rock) In 1957, when Black students were blocked from attending school in Little Rock, Arkansas, he publicly criticized President Eisenhower's tepid response in a newspaper interview. It was a rare moment when he revealed the anger hidden behind his usual genial image, and he even declared that he would refuse to take part in government-sponsored tours.
A popular hit that came after he reorganized his band as the small-group All Stars, it became the signature song of the years when he was called a roving ambassador.
- You can hear a sound that has returned to the New Orleans format, with trombone and clarinet each laying their own countermelody beneath the trumpet line.
- His husky voice and his way of singing as if telling a story became his trademark in this period.
VII. Hello, Dolly! and the final stage · 1957–1971 (age 56–70)
(Hello, Dolly!) In 1964 "Hello, Dolly!" knocked the Beatles' songs off the top of the Billboard chart, and at sixty-two he reached a popular peak once again. It was less the daring improvisation of his youth than the familiar cracked voice and the sound of his trumpet itself that the public loved. (Health) Long-standing heart disease curtailed his work, but he never left the stage entirely. He kept playing the trumpet against his doctors' advice, and he is said to have enjoyed a simple daily life at his home in Corona, Queens, mixing easily with the neighborhood children. (Death) On July 6, 1971, he died in his sleep at his home in New York. He was 69. The sound of the cornet that began in the back streets of New Orleans still rings out across the world after his death, carried along with the name of jazz.
It captures the moment when, at sixty-two, he reached the top of popular music and was embraced widely once more.
- The buoyant accompaniment, led by banjo and tuba, deliberately revives the sound of the early jazz years.
- The passage where he repeats the title phrase in his husky, cracked voice is the moment everyone talks about.
- The trumpet interlude is not long, yet its distinctive warm tone alone governs the mood of the whole song.
Singing of optimism in an era thrown into turmoil by racial strife and the Vietnam War, it remained as his final message to the world.
- It is a rare arrangement in which his voice alone, without the trumpet, carries the song over a soft accompaniment wrapped in strings.
- His breath control stands out as he begins in a low, rich bass and pushes the emotion up little by little toward the refrain.
- Only later did it become widely known that the song made little impression in America on its release and was first loved in Europe.
Lesser-known stories
For many years he enjoyed smoking marijuana and was never ashamed of it. In 1930 he was arrested in Los Angeles for possession and held for several days, yet in a draft of his autobiography he looked back on the experience with calm humor. These records long lay buried under a reluctance to make them public and have only recently become widely known through scholars' research. He left behind an enormous quantity of letters, diaries, reel-to-reel tape recordings and scrapbooks. He decorated each tape box with collages of photographs and newspaper clippings, which were known only as personal keepsakes until his home in Queens was converted into a museum and they were properly catalogued. He was an ardent devotee of Swiss Kriss, a digestive aid and laxative, handing it out to everyone he met and recommending it as his secret to good health. The anecdote that he loved sending friends photographs of himself seated on the toilet, inscribed with a short caption, was long not taken seriously because it did not fit the image of a great musician.
Glossary 📚🔎
Scat
(In jazz) A style of singing nonsense syllables instead of lyrics, using the voice as if it were an instrument. The key is that the melody is improvised on the spot; think of it as a trumpeter playing an improvised solo with the voice. It is like a rap battle at school, where rhymes are made up on the spot without set lyrics — scat, too, invents melody and rhythm then and there.
Call and response
(Meaning) A straight combination of 'call' and 'response,' referring to a pattern in which one side makes a sound and the other answers right away. (In jazz) A conversational way of playing in which one player or singer tosses out a short phrase and the other picks it up and answers. The structure of a church service, where the preacher says a line and the congregation responds, seeped directly into jazz performance. (Elsewhere) A cheer in which the cheerleaders shout a lead call and the crowd shouts it back works on the same principle.
Polyphony
(Meaning) Formed from poly, meaning 'many,' and phony, meaning 'sound,' it means several independent melodies sounding at once. (In jazz) Refers to the way early New Orleans jazz had clarinet · trombone · cornet each playing a different line at the same time while still blending as a whole. It is like several people singing different phrases of a round at once and somehow landing in harmony.
12-bar blues
(In jazz) The most basic song form, repeating three chords (harmonies) in a fixed order over twelve bars. Not only the blues but most early jazz built its improvisation on this framework. It is a structure much like singing lyrics at karaoke over an accompaniment that keeps repeating the same twelve-bar pattern.
Cadenza
(Meaning) From the Italian cadere, 'to fall,' it originally referred to an ornamental passage where the music pauses just before the piece ends. (In jazz) A passage in which the soloist plays alone, without accompaniment, in free rhythm and harmony. Free of a set beat, the player can play as if speaking at will, so it is counted as the moment when a performer's individuality shows most clearly.
Swing
(In jazz) A distinctive rhythmic feel that pushes and pulls slightly against the strict beat, making the body move on its own. Even when the notation is identical, each player pushes and pulls to a different degree, creating a feel of their own. It is like clapping hands with a friend and striking a little late rather than exactly on the beat, making it feel livelier. (Elsewhere) Swing can also mean a playground swing, or the motion of swinging a bat in baseball.