Happy Birthday Louis Daniel Armstrong!!
August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971, although Louis thought that he was born July 4, 1900!
Trumpeter, Vocalist, Bandleader, Actor, All-round Great Guy
Louis had a few nicknames, ‘Satchel Mouth’, which was shortened along the way to ‘Satchmo’, and ‘Pops’, which is what he called anyone who wasn’t a musician. Louis referred to all musicians as “cats.”
Although I didn’t know it at the time, Louis really gained his fame during the numerous years he spent in my hometown of Chicago. I was about six years old when I bought my first Louis Armstrong record. Man, I’ll never forget that sound. The ‘cat’ could blow! I also remember watching him on the television a short time later, seeing his wide eyes and that huge smile. Sometime later, I saw another television segment that I will always recall. Louis was shown practicing well after his performance had ended in a back area of the venue, proclaiming how it was so important for him to practice. It always stuck with me that if you wanted to be good, you had to practice well into the night!
Louis grew up quite poor in New Orleans, and ended up in a reform school, where he played cornet and ultimately led the programs band. Louis apparently bought his first cornet for five dollars with money loaned to him by the Karnofskys, a Russian-Jewish immigrant family who had a junk hauling business and gave him odd jobs. To express gratitude towards the Karnofskys, who took him in like a family member, and fed and nurtured him, Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant around his neck for the rest of his life. (Karnow, Stanley – “My Debt to Cousin Louis’s Cornet“, The New York Times, February 21, 2001)
After making it through his rough upbringing, Louis, having become a talented cornetist, attended many performances of his elders, played in the brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans and traveled up and down the Mississippi on the steamboats playing with Fate Marable. Louis termed his time with Marable as going to the “university,” because of the sights and the written arrangements he encountered.
Louis became popular because of his time in Chicago with King Oliver’s ‘Creole Jazz Band.’ While Louis later credited King Oliver for being responsible for his trumpet playing abilities, it is reported that William ‘Bunk’ Johnson was really the ‘dude’ that taught him how to play. Apparently, the person that really should be attributed to be the King of Jazz Trumpet was King Buddy Bolden. It is said that Bolden had a sort of ‘stomp’ style of trumpet playing. Bunk, who played with Bolden added fast finger work and high note runs with good tone. Louis who learned how to play from Bunk combined the two styles into his own. Many of the old cats of that era would say that there were three cornet players, Bolden, Bunk and Louis. In an old Downbeat magazine interview Louis is noted as corroborating this quote from Bunk, “When I would be playing with brass bands in the uptown section (of New Orleans), Louis would steal off from home and follow me. During that time, Louis started after me to show him how to blow my cornet. When the band would not be playing, I would let him carry it to please him. How he wanted me to teach him how to play the blues and ‘Ball the Jack’ and ‘Animal Ball,’ ‘Circus Day, Take It Away’ and ‘Didn’t He Ramble?’ and out of all those pieces he liked the blues the best. I took a job playing in a tonk for Dago Tony on Perdido and Franklin street and Louis used to slip in there and get on the music stand behind the piano. He would fool around with my cornet every chance he got. I showed him just how to hold it and place it to his mouth, and he did so, and it wasn’t long before he began getting a good tone out of my horn. Then I began showing him just how to start the blues, and little by little he began to understand.” “Now here is the year Louis started. It was in the latter part of 1911 as close as I can think. Louis was about 11 years old. Now I’ve said a lot about my boy Louis and just how he started playing cornet. He started playing it by head.”
After playing with the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band for a few years, his wife at the time, Lil Hardin Armstrong, began to bill him in publicity, much to his surprise, as the ‘greatest trumpet player of all time.’ After playing in New York for a year or so with the first rate Fletcher Henderson Orchestra with personnel like Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone, with prodding by his wife, Louis returned to Chicago. Lil wanted to increase her husband’s popularity and earnings. Louis started his own band around 1925. “At first he was actually a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He began recording under his own name for Okeh with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, producing hits such as “Potato Head Blues”, “Muggles” (a reference to marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness), and “West End Blues”, the music of which set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come.” (Wikipedia, Louis Armstrong)
In 1947, as times changed, Louis disbanded his big band and formed the smaller group known as the ‘Louis Armstrong Allstars.’ He toured the world for 20 some years and earned the honorary title, ‘America’s Ambassador.’
Over the years, Louis also came to be known as a singer. He had a very unique singing style and in 1964 won a Grammy for Best Male Vocal on his song ‘Hello Dolly.’ He also sang a style of singing called ‘scat.’ Scat is a singing style that doesn’t contain real words, just made up ones. His singing ability was probably fortuitous for Louis, because it is reported that at times he couldn’t play his trumpet due to the excessive pressue that he played with and the problems it caused his chops. The ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ listed the song ‘West End Blues’ by Armstrong on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.
In addition to his successful run on Broadway with the production, ‘Swinging the Dream,’ Louis appeared on several television shows and in two dozen films, including ‘High Society’ with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, ‘Cabin in the Sky’ and ‘The Five Pennies.’
Attention all you boppers, Louis thought that this new style of music being played by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie was an abomination that would ruin the music business! The headline to an old Downbeat interview with Louis read, “Bop Will Kill Business Unless It Kills Itself First.”
Also of note is that when pressed, and after only writing his own name down, Louis revealed that his favorite trumpet players were Bunny Berigan, Harry James, and Roy Eldridge.
The musical memories that Louis left us with are numerous, and I do mean numerous. His discography will fill a page or two. I encourage you to check out as many of them out as you can. He truly was one of the greatest!
So as I close this piece, I again say ‘Happy Birthday Louis, thanks for the music!’ and I’ll sign this with one of his oft used letter closings.
“Red Beans and Ricely Yours,”
Trumpet Dude
