9 questions · Music
He grew up in a part of New Orleans people called „the Battlefield“. His father was gone, his mother kept the family afloat with odd jobs, and the boy delivered coal, collected rags and sang for coins on street corners. On New Year's Eve 1912 he fired his stepfather's pistol into the air in celebration and was sent to a home for Black boys. There he was handed a cornet for the first time. He stayed a year and a half and said later that the home had saved his life. He kept learning in the bars of the entertainment district until the best cornet player in town, King Oliver, took him under his wing and brought him to Chicago in 1922. What Armstrong did there and in the years that followed changed music at its root: until then jazz bands played together, collectively and intertwined. Armstrong put one musician out in front, inventing freely over the chords: the solo as we know it goes back to his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings. Along the way he helped popularise scat singing, supposedly because he dropped the lyric sheet in the studio. Then came the second career that many people know first: Armstrong the singer with the unmistakable gravel, the entertainer with the white handkerchief and the enormous smile, the global star. „Hello, Dolly!“ knocked the Beatles off the top of the American charts in 1964, at the height of their fame; he was 62. Three years later he recorded „What a Wonderful World“, which flopped in America at first and was everywhere decades later. Younger Black musicians accused him of being too genial, too accommodating, too much the entertainer for white rooms. They were missing something. In 1957, when the Little Rock Nine were walking to school through abuse, Armstrong told a reporter the government could go to hell and cancelled a tour he was to make for the State Department. For an artist who lived off white audiences, that was a considerable risk.
Practise for freePurFact brings every card back right before you would forget it. That's how knowledge sticks.
Satchmo
Short for „Satchelmouth“, a nickname for his wide mouth.
💡 Did you know? A British journalist supposedly misheard „Satchelmouth“ and produced the shorter Satchmo. Armstrong preferred it.
The trumpet
He played with such force that his lips were at times scarred and bleeding.
💡 Did you know? He treated them with a German lip salve he ordered by the case: musicians later just called it Satchmo's salve.
In a boys' home
He had ended up there for firing his stepfather's pistol into the air on New Year's Eve.
💡 Did you know? He said later that the place saved his life: it was where he was first handed an instrument.
The solo
Until then jazz bands played collectively and intertwined; Armstrong pushed the soloist to the front.
💡 Did you know? His Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are seen as the point where dance music turned into an art form.
Scat
Instead of words you sing syllables and use the voice as an instrument.
💡 Did you know? The legend says he dropped the lyric sheet while recording „Heebie Jeebies“ in 1926 and simply carried on.
The Beatles
They had dominated the American charts for months.
💡 Did you know? Armstrong was 62: still the oldest musician ever to have a US number one.
What a Wonderful World
It went straight to number one in Britain but barely sold in America at first.
💡 Did you know? It only charted in the US after appearing in a film in 1987: twenty years after the recording and sixteen after Armstrong's death.
A tour for the government
He told a reporter the government could go to hell and refused to represent a country that would not let Black children go to school.
💡 Did you know? For an artist with a mostly white audience that was a real risk: bookings were cancelled on him afterwards.
Foto: Harry Warnecke / Gus Schoenbaechler · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Louis Armstrong
Home · All topics · Legal notice · Privacy · Terms · Contact
