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Louis Armstrong Biography
Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo, Satch, and Pops, was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz.
His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Louis Armstrong Age
Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4, 1900. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4, 1901, was discovered by Tad Jones by researching baptismal records. At least three other biographies treat the July 4th birth date as a myth.
He spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield. At six he attended the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated system of New Orleans. He did odd jobs for the Karnoffskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews.
While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects. He heard the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls such as Pete Lala’s, where King Oliver performed.
When Armstrong was eleven, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with him, Lucy, and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money.
He also got into trouble. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said he taught the eleven-year-old to play by ear at Dago Tony’s honky-tonk. In his later years, Armstrong credited King Oliver. He said about his youth, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans … It has given me something to live for.”
Louis Armstrong Songs
Louis Armstrong
Armstrong played in brass bands and riverboats in New Orleans, first on an excursion boat in September 1918. He traveled with the band of Fate Marable, which toured on the steamboat Sidney with the Streckfus Steamers line up and down the Mississippi River.
Marable was proud of his musical knowledge, and he insisted that Armstrong and other musicians in his band learn sight reading. Armstrong described his time with Marable as “going to the University”, since it gave him a wider experience working with written arrangements. He did return to New Orleans periodically. In 1919, Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory’s band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became the second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band. To get Armstrong songs you can click; https://www.oldies.com/artist-songs/Louis-Armstrong.
Louis Armstrong What A Wonderful World
What a Wonderful World” is a pop ballad written by Bob Thiele (as “George Douglas”) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released in 1967 as a single, which topped the pop charts in the United Kingdom.
Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world (Thiele as a producer and Weiss as a composer/performer). Armstrong’s recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The publishing for this song is controlled by Memory Lane Music Group, Carlin Music Corp. and BMG Rights Management.
Louis Armstrong Family
Armstrong’sparents were Mary Albert from Boutte, Louisiana, and William Armstrong. And gave birth at home when she was about sixteen. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after. About two years later, he had a daughter, Beatrice “Mama Lucy” Armstrong, who was raised by Albert.
Louis Armstrong Spouse
On March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Daisy Parker married at City Hall. He met Parker, a local prostitute and began the affair as a client. They adopted Armstrong cousin’s son Clarence. Who was three-years-old. His mother, Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as the result of a head injury at an early age. And Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.
On February 4, 1924, he married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver’s pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. His second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith. His marriage to his third wife lasted four years, and they divorced in 1942. Louis then married Lucille Wilson in October 1942, a singer at the Cotton Club, to whom he was married until his death in 1971.
Armstrong’s marriages never produced any offspring, though he loved children. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille “Sweets” Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston’s newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400 (US$4,676 in 2018 dollars to mother and child.
Louis Armstrong Nicknames
The nicknames “Satchmo” and “Satch” are short for “Satchelmouth”. The nickname has many possible origins. The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy in New Orleans dancing for pennies.
He scooped the coins off the street and stuck them into his mouth to prevent bigger children from stealing them. Someone dubbed him “satchel mouth” for his mouth acting as a satchel. Another tale is that because of his large mouth, he was nicknamed “satchel mouth” which was shortened to “Satchmo”.
Early on he was also known as “Dipper”, short for “Dippermouth”, a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues. and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure. The nickname “Pops” came from Armstrong’s own tendency to forget people’s names and simply call them “Pops” instead. The nickname was turned on Armstrong himself. It was used as the title of a 2010 biography of Armstrong by Terry Teachout.
Louis Armstrong Death
Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Empire Room against his doctor’s advice. At the end of it, he was hospitalized for a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in May and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing.
Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was buried in Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, New York City.
His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson, and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord’s Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.
Louis Armstrong Quotes
♦ Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.
♦ I was determined to play my horn against all odds
♦ When this ugly gangster told Joe Glaser that he must take the name of Armstrong down, off of the marquee, and it was an ‘order from Al Capone,’
♦ Mr. Glaser looked this cat straight in the face and told him these words: ‘I think that Louis Armstrong is the world’s greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.’
♦ I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long.
♦ I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.
♦ I gathered that those two Big-shot Boys, Joe + Fletcher, just was afraid to let me sing, thinking maybe I’d sort of ruin their reputations with their musical public. They not knowing that I had been singing all of my life. In churches, etc. I had one of the finest All Boys Quartets that ever walked the streets of New Orleans.
♦ ‘Cat?’ ‘Cat’ can be anybody from the guy in the gutter to a lawyer, doctor, the biggest man to the lowest man, but if he’s in there with a good heart and enjoys the same music together, he’s a cat.
Louis Armstrong Net Worth
The American jazz trumpeter and singer had a net worth of $10 million dollars. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to a very poor family.