Louis Armstrong

• Born: August 4, 1901
• Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
• Died: July 6, 1971
• Place of death: Corona, Queens, New York

American musician

Armstrong’s importance to the development of jazz is inestimable. Whether played or sung, almost all aspects of jazz style and technique were influenced directly by his innovations of the 1920’s. His concepts of range, tone, phrasing, and rhythm, along with his sophisticated choice of pitch, were widely imitated.

Area of achievement Music

Early Life

The son of Willie Armstrong, a turpentine worker, and Mary Ann (or Mayann) Armstrong, the granddaughter of slaves, Louis (LEW-ee) Armstrong was born in a district of New Orleans, Louisiana, called, according to Armstrong, the Battlefield. Armstrong himself said that “Daniel” (given in many sources) was never part of his name, and that he was not even sure how he acquired it. Prostitution, shootings, knifings, drunkenness, and gambling were common in the area where Armstrong spent the first years of his life. His parents separated when he was five. He and his sister lived in poverty with his mother and grandmother near the dance halls and saloons, whose music, along with what he sang and heard in church, was his initial influence. As a boy, Armstrong worked at odd jobs, sang for pennies, and formed part of a strolling vocal quartet. After firing a pistol into the air on New Year’s Eve of 1913, he was arrested, taken to jail, and then sent to the Colored Waifs’ Home, generally known as the Jones Home, in New Orleans. There he received his first formal musical training from Peter Davis, the home’s bandmaster and drill instructor. Within the year, Armstrong was playing the cornet and leading the home’s brass band.

When he was finally released to his mother, who was ill, in 1914, Armstrong supported both of them by working at various day-jobs, including delivering coal and selling newspapers. He also began taking cornet lessons from his lifelong idol, jazz cornetist Joe “King” Oliver. Armstrong quickly undertook the development of those jazz skills that he had, until then, been able to admire only at a distance. Slowly, he became one of the most sought-after musicians in New Orleans, one of the few who was good enough to earn his living by playing. In 1918, he married Daisy Parker; they would be divorced in 1923.

After King Oliver left for an engagement in Chicago in 1919, Armstrong replaced him in Kid Ory’s Brownskin Band. Given his improvising abilities, clarity of tone, formidable technique, and rhythmic freedom, Armstrong soon became a drawing card in his own right. Joining Fate Marable’s band on various Mississippi excursion boats, he played up and down the river in the summers of 1920 and 1921. Around this time, Armstrong wrote one of his first songs, “Get Off Katie’s Head” (published as “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”); he received from the publishers neither the fifty dollars they had promised for the song nor credit as the composer. In New Orleans, he continued to play at various clubs and also did street parade work, appearing regularly with Pap Celestin’s Tuxedo Band.

Life’s Work

As Armstrong’s reputation spread, Fletcher Henderson, a rising bandleader in New York, offered him a job. Armstrong was timid and agreed to the move only if his friend, drummer Zutty Singleton, was hired too. Since Henderson already had a drummer, Armstrong remained in New Orleans until King Oliver summoned him to Chicago in the summer of 1922. Oliver’s Original Creole Jazz Band was unusually disciplined, and the demands of his second cornetist’s role further improved Armstrong’s musicianship. The sensitivity and discipline of his second cornet parts to Oliver’s lead are especially apparent on a recording of “Mabel’s Dream.” While his first recorded solo with the band, “Chimes Blues,” is undistinguished, it was toward individual, not collective, playing that Armstrong moved steadily and surely. Nevertheless, it took Lillian (Lil) Hardin, the band’s pianist, whom he married in 1924, to persuade him to leave an environment that had begun to restrict him. Armstrong’s sense of obligation ran deep.

In 1924, Armstrong reluctantly accepted Fletcher Henderson’s invitation to join his big band in New York. As a section player, Armstrong conformed in his ensemble playing to the stiff rhythms then favored by Henderson, but his sophisticated solos brought a novel style to the city’s dance and jazz music. He exerted a broad influence on New York musicians, among them Henderson’s arranger, Don Redman, who soon developed orchestral counterparts to Armstrong’s devices. While in New York, Armstrong made a memorable series of recordings with Perry Bradford’s Jazz Phools, with Clarence Williams’s groups, and as an accompanist to Bessie Smith and other blues singers.

Generally known as Satchmo (an abbreviation for “Satchel-mouth”), Armstrong acquired early a basic strength and beauty of sound that is apparent in his work with Oliver and Henderson. To the melodic richness, emotional depth, and rhythmic variety of the blues, he added an already exceptional technique allowing every note to be full and every phrase to be perfectly shaped. No matter what the tempo, his playing sounded unhurried: such relaxation led to a deep and consistent swing. All these abilities combined with a vein of melodic invention so rich that it did not falter for many years.

An essential part of his style once he left Oliver’s band, Armstrong’s singing was inimitable. He sang like he played, or vice versa, which is not surprising given the important connection in the African heritage between speech and music. His scat singing (using nonsense syllables) was clearly a vocalization of his instrumental inflection and phrasing. Armstrong once made the unlikely claim that he invented scat singing, but he was the first to use it on records. His voice had a buoyancy and roughness that quickly became legendary.

A more accomplished musician for his big band schooling and brimming with energy and inventiveness, Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1925. There, he played with his wife’s group and with bands headed by Erskine Tate and Carroll Dickerson. For most of 1927, he led his own group. Armstrong had also begun making a series of recordings under his own name in 1925. He established an international reputation with these records, revealing the power of his musical ideas and his range and originality as an improviser. These recordings also show Armstrong looking for an appropriate accompaniment for his increasingly virtuosic solo style.

The earliest of these accompanying groups those of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings with Hardin, the Dodds brothers, Kid Ory, and Johnny St. Cyr were modeled on New Orleans ensembles. Masterpieces of the later New Orleans style such as “Butter and Egg Man,”“Struttin’ with Some Barbeque,” and “Potato Head Blues” come from this 1926-1927 period. Then in 1928, Armstrong turned to a more modern small band, collaborating with Earl Hines and Zutty Singleton. Trumpet, piano, and drums dominated, there being no further pretense of New Orleans equality. Armstrong now appeared at his most modernistic; the music is characterized by virtuosity, double-time spurts, complex ensembles, rhythmic juggling, and unpredictable harmonic alterations. From this period come “West End Blues,” “Beau Koo Jack,” and “Weatherbird Rag,” the latter a remarkable duet with Hines.

It is difficult to see how Armstrong’s intense musical conversation with Hines could have been maintained longer than it was. Consequently, in mid-1929, Armstrong adopted the format he was to use until 1947, a big band providing a neutral accompaniment to his now large-scale, virtuoso conceptions of his playing and singing. Perhaps his further development was possible only against a purely subsidiary background. Initial results were excellent, with 1933 marking the peak of this period. Having done everything then possible with traditional jazz material, he began to concentrate on a popular repertory. While his technical innovations ceased, he still performed with great artistic merit, demonstrating his power and maturity on such classics as “Body and Soul,” “Star Dust,” “Sweethearts on Parade,” and “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.”

After 1933, Armstrong embarked increasingly on an all-too-thorough commercialization of his talent under the guidance of his longtime manager, Joe Glaser. His popular hits began with Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which he debuted in the Hot Chocolates revue of 1930, and culminated in the hit song from the Broadway show Hello, Dolly! in the 1960’s. There was a strong streak of ham in Armstrong, and his comic posing and patter, which endeared him to many, embarrassed others, such as Benny Goodman, who thought his music excellent and his vaudevillian antics corny and unworthy of him.

Over the years, Armstrong seemed to become more and more indifferent to what he played and with whom he played. A meaningful context was lacking, given the gap between his own majestic playing and his often abysmal accompaniment. Even his magic was unable to transform the increasing amount of novelty material he recorded. Nevertheless, Armstrong also used his craft and experience to distill and simplify his playing. In place of virtuoso performance, every note was made to count.

During the 1930’s, Armstrong toured and recorded with large groups, both in the United States and in Europe. He worked off and on with such bandleaders and musical directors as Luis Russell, Chick Webb, and Les Hite. Throughout the late 1930’s, he played residencies and toured with his own orchestra. Armstrong also began to make film appearances, the first in Pennies from Heaven with Bing Crosby in 1936. Hundreds of records of his own and other groups made him influential as a player and singer of popular music and brought him an ever wider audience. His best recordings of the 1930’s are nearly all remakes of old successes, including “Save It, Pretty Mama,” “Mahogany Hall Stomp,” and “Monday Date.” Obtaining a divorce from Lil, Armstrong married Alpha Smith in 1938. The marriage was not built on a very sound foundation, and no one was surprised when it did not last. In 1942, Armstrong married Lucille Wilson, the woman who was to be his wife for the rest of his life.

Eventually, Armstrong returned to playing with small groups; there were still some great records to come, as well as many pleasant ones. Following successful appearances with small groups in 1947, including one in the film New Orleans, he formed his All-Stars, with which he worked until his death. A sextet based on the New Orleans model, its instrumentation remained the same, though the personnel varied. Among those associated with the All-Stars over the years were pianist Earl Hines, trombonists Trummy Young and Jack Teagarden, clarinetists Ed Hall and Barney Bigard, and drummers Cozy Cole and Sid Catlett. Armstrong was frequently able to demonstrate with the All-Stars his superb quality as a jazz musician.

During the 1950’s, besides working in the United States and Canada, the All-Stars toured in Europe, South America, Africa, Australia, and the Far East. Exasperated by the Eisenhower administration’s do-nothing policy toward black civil rights in the South, Armstrong, in protest, once canceled his Department of State-backed tour of the Soviet Union. This was not the Armstrong of records or stage; regardless of such social activism, Armstrong always seemed the wellspring of goodness, which was very advantageous to the image of jazz, both at home and abroad.

Throughout the 1960’s, the All-Stars did even more international touring, earning for Armstrong the nickname Ambassador Satch. He had come to symbolize jazz to the world. During the late 1960’s, illness incapacitated Armstrong several times, taking its toll on his playing. For more than a year, in 1969 and 1970, he was only able to sing in public appearances. He resumed playing but suffered a heart attack in March of 1971. Armstrong died in New York City on July 6 of that year.

Significance

Louis Armstrong’s contribution to the development of jazz was partly that of innovator and stylist, partly one of pure virtuosity, both imaginatively and technically, and partly one of showmanship. He was responsible, more than anyone else, for the fact that jazz became not so much a collective ensemble style as a soloist’s art. Moreover, he was the bridge between Dixieland and swing, the next important development in jazz. By the time of his death, he had exerted a profound influence on his fellow jazz musicians such as trumpeters Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to whom Armstrong is “Pops,” the patriarch of their own stylistic development.

The influence of Armstrong on the history of jazz dubbed by some as “America’s classical music” is so pervasive that it has on occasion been blithely dismissed by those who fault him for not having kept up with the changes in the music. It is clear, however, that Armstrong’s continued success as player and singer helped make jazz a vital force in the general culture of the United States and, to some degree, of the rest of the world. His radiant optimism, his virtuosity, and his indefatigable sense of fun played an important role in promoting jazz everywhere.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Louis. Swing That Music. New York: Longmans, Green, 1936. An autobiography by the musician that provides a personal perspective on his life.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1955. A later autobiography; like his earlier work, it should be read in conjunction with a well-researched biographical treatment.

Brothers, Thomas. Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. A chronicle of Armstrong’s early life, describing how his years in New Orleans, a hotbed of musical activity in the early twentieth century, nurtured both jazz and Armstrong’s musicianship.

Chilton, John, and Max Jones. Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900-1971. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. A reasonably good biography of Armstrong.

Collier, James Lincoln. Louis Armstrong: An American Genius. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. The definitive biography. Factually reliable, and good in dealing with the myths and sheer fiction that have become part of the Armstrong story. (Collier points up, for example, the inaccuracy behind the commonly listed birth date for Armstrong, July 4, 1900.) Contains a brief discography.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. An excellent history of jazz, including a chapter devoted to Armstrong, “The First Genius.”

Giddins, Gary. Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong. 2d rev. ed. New York: DaCapo Press, 2001. Comprehensive biography by a prominent jazz writer and historian. Includes photographs and discography.

Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. Vol. 1, The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. The definitive study of the development of jazz prior to the early 1930’s. Armstrong’s significance is emphasized. Uses an ethnomusicological approach to the African elements in jazz.

Tirro, Frank. Jazz: A History. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. A solid jazz history, good on detail.

Williams, Martin. Jazz Masters of New Orleans. New York: Macmillan, 1967. A collection of essays on New Orleans jazz musicians, including Armstrong.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: 1920’s: Harlem Renaissance; February 15, 1923: Bessie Smith Records “Downhearted Blues”; November, 1925: Armstrong Records with the Hot Five; December 4, 1927: Ellington Begins Performing at the Cotton Club; 1933: Billie Holiday Begins Her Recording Career.

1941-1970: March 28, 1946: Parker’s Playing Epitomizes Bebop; January 21, 1949-March 9, 1950: Davis Develops 1950’s Cool Jazz; July 17-18, 1954: First Newport Jazz Festival Is Held.