Louis Armstrong

Little Louis sang along and absorbed all the jazz music he heard everywhere in the City of New Orleans.
He was taught to play the cornet in The Waifs Home.
He was soon playing what others were trying to play, replacing Joe Oliver in Kid Ory's band, flirting with 'The Silver Leaf Band' and 'The Tuxedo Brass Band' and with Fate Marable on the riverboats!
'Coal Cart Blues'.
An aspiring cornet player at 22, Louis left his native New Orleans on August 8th 1922.
Chicago was the place for the jobs. The southern Jim Crow laws forced the exodus of the talented. Negroes started to pick themselves up in the face of the KKK and build their own institutions. The Speakeasies of Prohibition offered big opportunities for black musicians in Chicago.
Louis finished his apprenticeship in 1923 along side Joe Oliver at 'The Lincoln Gardens Cafe' in Chicago.
Jazz was novelty music until Louis showed the way.
Austin High School - Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, Dave Tough, Joe Sullivan, Frank Teschemaker. Following the records of the NORK in 'The Spoon and Straw' ice cream parlour.
In October 1924, now a brilliant musician, Louis joined Fletcher 'Smack' Henderson at 'The Roseland Ballroom' in New York. Abstraction and swing and punch and bounce.
Young Louis started to teach the older established players how to swing. After two years he became disillusioned with sloppy musicianship and no singing.
Louis returned to Chicago in 1925 as a star ready to tell the story of his musical development on record.
Initially he played with Lil Hardin Armstrong at 'The Dreamland' in Chicago until divorce in April 1926.
Then in November 1925 the single most influential combo in the history of jazz, The Hot 5, started to record a series of classics.
New Orleans jazz matured in 1925, Louis brought it all together in his Hot 5 and 7 ensemble playing, solos, and vocals.
In December 1925 Louis was invited to join Erskine Tate’s ‘symphony orchestra’ at The Vendome Theatre.Early 1926, Earl Hines persuades Louis to join Carroll Dickerson’s gang at Joe Glaser's 'Sunset Café' with Percy Venable organising the floor show. The gig lasted until November 1927.The Hot 5 recordings reflect the musical Development of Louis and Dixieland Jazz -
1 - the traditional New Orleans ensemble with the best New Orleans musicians available
2 - unbridled technical skills and confidence of individual solo expression
3 - freedom and fun but overwhelmingly emotional – exuberance, joy, tragedy, drama, deep sadness …2 - from embellishing the melody to playing the changes5 - the emergence of swing …Louis invented swing and jazz singing with his across-the-bar phrasing, odd syncopations and rhythmic innovations; he added more to the jazz language than anyone else.Louis Armstrong became an internationally famous jazz cornet and trumpet player, singer and bandleader. He brought New Orleans-style jazz to an wide audience and almost single-handedly transformed the music from a group form into an art for the individual swinging soloist.
In April 1928 Louis was at 'The Savoy' fronting his big band (Carroll Dickerson again) and then in 1929 Tommy Rockwell enticed him back to New York and after recording ‘Knockin’ a Jug’ with Jack Teagarden he abandoned the small Dixieland groups and moved on to big bands and swing and was introduced big time to white audiences.'Lafayette' for starters then 'Connie's Inn' on 7th Avenue with Dutch Schultz. Then 'Hot Chocolates' on Broadway for whites ! 'Ain't Misbeahavin'' made all his contemporaries look ordinary. Singing like never, a born showman.
During 1930/31 Louis recorded using Luis Russell's band in New York and Les Hite's band in California. Johnny Collins springs Louis in LA after a marijuana bust and claims management rights. But Dutch Schultz and Tommy Rockwell wanted Louis back at Connie's Inn! But he never played in New York until the gangster era was over.
Louis was in Europe in 1933 with big lip problems and being fleeced by Collins. Back to New York in 1935 with no job. Then Joe Glaser took over, sorted out the mob, got a contract with Decca, took 50% and things looked up. Some movies led the way and Louis' big band survived until The All Stars were formed in 1947 at Billy Berg's Club in LA.
Younger musicians were preoccupied with Bird but Louis recorded an immense Town Hall Concert which white audiences loved. Louis was playing with whites in the band Teagarden !
Some young blacks were ashamed of Louis' Uncle Tom attitude but he was playing small group jazz again which was the original definition of jazz. 
1957 Louis still and all rounder loved by the whites but speaks out about the treatment of blacks in Arkansas.


the venues - Lincoln Gardens, Sunset Cafe, Vendome Theatre, Dreamland Cafe, Friars Inn, Royal Gardens, Savoy Ballroom, Roseland Dance Hall, Connie's Inn, Saratoga Club, Arcadia Ballroom, The Pekin
Influences -
popular singing and trumpet playing
all popular music
Chicago Eddie Condon & the Austin High School
Dixieland revival
everything


1930-1939 - In 1930 Armstrong swings harder than ever. In 1931 he records "Stardust". The same year, the young Charlie Parker is given his first alto saxophone by his mother. In 1932 Duke Ellington records the classic "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing". Also in the 1930's, jazz begins to develop its own spoken language. New terms and phrases are being used. Examples include hot, break it down, freak lips, my chops are beat, boogie man, and chill ya. In 1939 war breaks out in Europe.