Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), was one of the most influential and famous jazz performers of all time. Armstrong gained recogition as the world's greatest jazz coronet and trumpet players in the 1920's and early 1930's.
Armstrong was born in New Orleans on July the fourth. He learned to play the coronet while in the House for Colored Waifs, serving a sentence for delinquency. In 1922, Armstrong left New Orleans and headed for Chicago. Once there he joined King Olivers' Creole Jazz Band. One of the band members , Lil Hardin, coached Armstrong . In 1924 Louis and Lil married, and Lil became Louis's second of four wives. In that same year, Armstrong, with encouragement from Hardin, left Chicago to join Fletcher Henderson's band in New York City.
Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1925. For the next few years Armstrong stayed in Chicago and made a series of small band recordings. Mandy of the recordings were under the names of Hot Five, which later became the Hot Seven. These recordings are ranked among the master pieces of jazz; they showed Armstrongs brilliant tone and tremendous range. In one of these recordings, under the name Hot Five, Armstrong introduced scat singing, a rythmic wordless style of singing. During this period is where Louis switched from coronet to trumpet.
Starting in 1929, Armstrong began appearing in musical shows, many times as the feature soloist for big bands. By the mid-1930's he had become less of a famous jazz musician and more of an entertainer. In 1947, Armstrong formed a series of bands known as the All Stars. As Louis grew older and his health declined he played less and and began singing more. Louis Armstrong was a wonderful jazz coronet and trumpet player, a singer, bandleader, and an extremely popular entertainer. Still to this day his music and songs live on. Armstrong overcame poverty, a lack of education, and racism to become one of the most innovative and influential musicians of the 20th century, and one of the most beloved entertainers of the world.
Amy E. Harwell
Satchmo and the Harlem Renaissance
Louis Armstrong was an active musician from the 1920's through the 1970's, but his unique style had its greatest affect during the Harlem Renaissance. Louis may have started from humble beginnings, but as he grew in popularity, his uniqe style set the standard for jazz musicians of his time, and of the future.
"Satchmo's" main triumph in the jazz world was transferring the focus from the band as a whole to instrumental and vocal soloists. Armstrong didn't stop there, though. He not only set the standards for flexibility in rythms and the development of jazz, but also became one of the first jazz musicians to successfuly break away from the common 4/4 timing. Louis's style pulled strongly from the blues, and his unique voice became a trademark which would be mimicked by listeners and musicians alike. In his vocal solos, Louis also known as "Satchmo" or "Pops", was prone to using scat (the use of syllables which imitate sounds of instruments rather than words) for vocal solos, and in his instrumental solos, Louis brought high register playing into more common use for jazz musicians.
Marcy K. McGinnis
