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Biography
Louis Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz
musicians. Armstrong defined what it was to play
Jazz. His amazing technical abilities, the joy and
spontaneity, and amazingly quick, inventive
musical mind still dominate Jazz to this day. Only
Charlie Parker comes close to having as much
influence on the history of Jazz as Louis
Armstrong did. Like almost all early Jazz
musicians, Louis was from New Orleans. He was from
a very poor family and was sent to reform school
when he was twelve after firing a gun in the air
on New Year's Eve. At the school he learned to
play cornet. After being released at age fourteen,
he worked selling papers, unloading boats, and
selling coal from a cart. He didn't own an
instrument at this time, but continued to listen
to bands at clubs like the Funky Butt Hall. Joe
"King" Oliver was his favorite and
the older man acted as a father to Louis, even
giving him his first real cornet, and instructing
him on the instrument. By 1917 he played in an Oliver
inspired group at dive bars in New Orleans'
Storyville section. In 1919 he left New Orleans
for the first time to join Fate
Marable's band in St. Louis. Marable
led a band that played on the Strekfus
Mississsippi river boat lines. When the boats left
from New Orleans Armstrong also played regular
gigs in Kid
Ory's band. Louis stayed with Marable
until 1921 when he returned to New Orleans and
played in Zutty
Singleton's. He also played in parades with
the Allen Brass Band, and on the bandstand with Papa
Celestin's Tuxedo Orchestra , and the Silver
Leaf Band. When King
Oliver left the city in 1919 to go to Chicago,
Louis took his place in Kid
Ory's band from time to time. In 1922 Louis
received a telegram from his mentor Joe
Oliver, asking him to join his Creole
Jazz Band at Lincoln Gardens (459 East 31st
Street) in Chicago. This was a dream come true for
Armstrong and his amazing playing in the band soon
made him a sensation among other musicians in
Chicago. The New Orleans style of music took the
town by storm and soon many other bands from down
south made their way north to Chicago. While
playing in Oliver's
Creole Jazz Band, Armstrong met Lillian
Hardin, a piano player and arranger for the
band. In February of 1924 they were married. Lil
was a very intelligent and ambitious woman who
felt that Louis was wasting himself playing in Oliver's
band. By the end of 1924 she pressured Armstrong
to reluctantly leave his mentor's band. He briefly
worked with Ollie
Powers' Harmony Syncopators before he moved to
New York to play in Fletcher
Henderson's Orchestra for 13 months. During
that time he also did dozens of recording sessions
with numerous Blues singers, including Bessie
Smith's 1925 classic recording of "St.
Louis Blues". He also recorded with Clarence
Williams and the Red
Onion Jazz Babies. In 1925 Armstrong moved
back to Chicago and joined his wife's band at the
Dreamland Cafe (3520 South State Street). He also
played in Erskine
Tate's Vendome Orchestra and then with Carrol
Dickenson's Orchestra at the Sunset Cafe (313-17
East 35th Street at the corner of Calmet Street).
Armstrong recorded his first Hot
Five records that same year. This was the
first time that Armstrong had made records under
his own name. The records made by Louis
Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot
Seven are considered to be absolute jazz
classics and speak of Armstrong's creative powers.
The band never played live, but continued
recording until 1928. While working at the Sunset,
Louis met his future manager, Joe Glaser. Glaser
managed the Sunset at that time. Armstrong
continued to play in Carrol Dickenson's Orchestra
until 1929. He also led his own band on the same
venue under the name of Louis
Armstrong and his Stompers. For the next two
years Armstrong played with Carroll
Dickerson's Savoy Orchestra and with Clarence
Jones' Orchestra in Chicago. By 1929 Louis was
becoming a very big star. He toured with the show
"Hot Chocolates" and appeared
occasionally with the Luis
Russell Orchestra, with Dave Peyton, and with Fletcher
Henderson. Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in
1930 where he fronted a band called Louis
Armstrong and his Sebastian New Cotton Club
Orchestra. In 1931 he returned to Chicago and
assembled his own band for touring purposes. In
June of that year he returned to New Orleans for
the first time since he left in 1922 to join King
Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Armstrong was
greeted as a hero, but racism marred his return
when a White radio announcer refused to mention
Armstrong on the air and a free concert that Louis
was going to give to the cities' African-American
population was cancelled at the last minute. Louis
and Lil
also separated in 1931. In 1932 he returned to
California, before leaving for England where he
was a great success. For the next three years
Armstrong was almost always on the road. He
crisscrossed the U.S. dozens of times and returned
to Europe playing in Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Holland and England. In 1935 he returned to the
U.S. and hired Joe Glaser to be his manager. He
had known Glaser when he was the manager of the
Sunset Cafe in Chicago in the 1920s. Glaser was
allegedly connected to the Al Capone mob, but
proved to be a great manager and friend for Louis.
Glaser remained Armstrong's manager until his
death in 1969. Glaser took care of the business
end of things, leaving Armstrong free to
concentrate on his music. He also hired the Luis
Russell Orchestra as Louis' backup band with
Russell as the musical director. This was like
going home for Armstrong, because Russell's
Orchestra was made up of predominantly New
Orleans musicians, many of whom had also played
with King
Oliver. The band was renamed Louis
Armstrong and his Orchestra and was one of the
most popular acts of the Swing era. Glaser put the
band to work and they toured constantly for the
next ten years. During this period Armstrong
became one of the most famous men in America. In
1938 Lil
and Louis finally got a divorce. Louis then
married Alpha, his third wife. The endless touring
was hard on their marriage and they were divorced
four years later, but Armstrong quickly remarried
Lucille and they remained married for the rest of
his life. For the next nine years the Louis
Armstrong Orchestra continued to tour and
release records, but as the 1940s drew to a close
the public's taste in Jazz began to shift away
from the commercial sounds of the Swing era and
big band Jazz. The so-called Dixieland Jazz
revival was just beginning and Be Bop was also
starting to challenge the status quo in the Jazz
world. The Louis Armstrong Orchestra was beginning
to look tired and concert and record sales were
declining. Critics complained that Armstrong was
becoming too commercial. So, in 1947 Glaser fired
the orchestra and replaced them with a small group
that became one of the greatest and most popular
bands in Jazz history. The group was called the
Louis Armstrong Allstars and over the years
featured exceptional musicians like Barney
Bigard, Jack
Teagarden, Sidney ‘Big Sid’ Catlett ,
vocalist Vilma Middleton, and Earl
Hines. The band went through a number of
personnel changes over the years but remained
extremely popular worldwide. They toured
extensively travelling to Africa, Asia, Europe and
South America for the next twenty years until
Louis' failing health caused them to disband.
Armstrong became known as America's Ambassador. In
1963 Armstrong scored a huge international hit
with his version of "Hello Dolly". This
number one single even knocked the Beatles off the
top of the charts. In 1968 he recorded another
number one hit with the touchingly optimistic
"What A Wonderful World". Armstrong's
health began to fail him and he was hospitalized
several times over the remaining three years of
his life, but he continued playing and recording.
On July 6th 1971 the world's greatest Jazz
musician died in his sleep at his home in Queens,
New York.
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