Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong, arguably the greatest entertainer, and trumpet player during the renaissance era. Louis Armstrong was inspired by people such as Joe the king Oliver, Lil Hardin, and Peter Davis. Louis Armstrong was one of the most famous and influential performers in the entire history of jazz. Louis Armstrong began to be noticed by important people in the 1920’s and the early 1930’s. Louis Armstrong was born august 4th 1901 in the ghettos of New Orleans. He learned to play the trumpet. He lived in a home of colored homeless people, where he met Peter Davis, (the band leader). In 1922 Louis Armstrong joined Joe Oliver’s creole jazz band, and by doing that he later on met Lil Hardin. These people made a big impact on Louis Armstrong’s life. Louis Armstrong was very productive from the 1920’s to the 1960’s; he provided jazz with its big leap forward. His Hot Five and Hot Seven group recordings for the Okelt records label between 1925 and 1928. They were the greatest that the label had accomplished in music to that point of time. Louis Armstrong’s father was a work man and his mother sold her body. But this did not stop Armstrong from doing what he was doing.

The 1950s proved to be regeneration for Armstrong, as both a musician and a role model to several. Though he had been singing since his early days in Chicago, it was not until the 1950s that audiences recognized his great skill as a singer as well. His voice became, almost instantly and globally recognized of jazz itself just because it was so good. His 1956 recording with Ella Fitzgerald of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was one of the most popular and best loved duets of the 1950s. For many, his singing was the perfection of a genre just then in its infancy.

With his increasing fame came the criticism of a black community that felt he was not living up to the responsibilities of the times. The late fifties brought with them the civil rights movement, and many blacks saw Armstrong as a very important person of music, playing for primarily white audiences around the world. Though these claims were not right, Armstrong was then in his sixties and primarily concerned with continuing to travel and perform. Louis Armstrong spent the final ten years of his life in the same way that he lived his present four years. Entertaining audiences throughout the world. In 1971 he died of a fatal heart attack in New York City. The history of jazz is covered with very important people that listened to his music. He will always remain a major symbol and not just a trumpet player, but a musician of the entire cultural life of the 20th century of America.