Music and Movie Mondays
Hey everyone, this is my very first entry on my Music and Movie Mondays. Over the next few Mondays I will be writing about my favorite music genre, Jazz. I wanted to start by telling you about my favorite jazz musician, The Father of Jazz, Mr. Louis Armstrong.
For many years it was thought that Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in New Orleans on the 4th of July, 1900. It was what Louis thought anyway, however, it was discovered that Louis’s birth certificate proved that Louis was really born on August 4 1901. Soon after his birth his father, William Armstrong, abandoned him and his mother, Mary Ann Armstrong. He was born and raised in one of the toughest and poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans where he was raised by his maternal grandmother until he was five. When his mother became very sick he went to live with her. To support Louis and his little sister Beatrice, his mother became a prostitute, leaving Louis alone often to care for himself and Beatrice.
At a very young age, Louis started doing multiple jobs to help support his family. He would sing on street corners for pennies, worked a junk wagon, cleaned graves for tips, delivered milk, and sold many things such as coal, bananas, and newspapers.
His first instrument was a simple tin horn; he used it to draw attention to the junk collector’s wagon on which he worked. At age 7 the junk dealer he worked for helped him buy his first cornet for $5 at a pawn shop after which he taught himself to play.
At age 11 he had his first formal lesson on the cornet in the Colored Waif’s Home, a reform institution. He was sent there after shooting off a pistol into the air at a New Year’s Eve Celebration, December 31, 1912. “My whole success goes back to that time,” said Louis. There he joined the school band and was soon made leader. He was released on June 16, 1914, after which he decided to pursue a career as a musician.
Armstrong later began to perform with pick-up bands in small clubs, funerals, picnics, and parades around town; this is how he captured the ear of Joe “King” Oliver, a member of Kid Ory’s Band, one of the finest Cornet players around. Oliver became his mentor, and when Oliver left for Chicago, Armstrong took his place in Kid Ory’s Band.
In 1922 Louis and his first wife, Daisy Parker, moved to Chicago to join his mentor, Joe Oliver, becoming a member of “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. In 1923 Daisy and Louis divorced; soon after Louis married the band’s pianist Lillian Hardin. Over the next few years Louis traveled between New York and Chicago playing and recording with several bands.
In 1925 Louis returned to Chicago, where he switched from the Cornet to the trumpet and vocals. From 1925 to 1928, Louis led a recording group known as the “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven”. They produced nearly 90 recordings, which included hits such as “Potato Head Blues”, “Big Butter and Egg Man”, “The Heebie Jeebies”, and “West End Blues”. It was 1926 when the “Hot Five” recorded “The Heebie Jeebies”, which was a song about a popular dance. It was the second time Louis had ever sung on a recording. During the second verse of the song Louis dropped his sheet music and could not remember the words to the song. He improvised and began to scat “Deep-dah-jeep-bop-a-dobby-on-doe-dah, leep-a-la-da-dee-da-dee-on-bo.” Although Louis hadn’t invented this type of singing, it was he who had been the first person to record it. People loved it, and it sold over 40,000 copies in just a few weeks.
In 1935 Joe Glaser became Armstrong’s manager, and remained his manager for the rest of his career, helping Armstrong become an international star. With Glaser as his manager, Louis performed in films, on the radio, and in the best theaters, dance halls, and night clubs. With Glaser, Louis recorded hits such as “Mack the Knife”, and “Blueberry Hill”. In 1964 his recording of “Hello, Dolly!” reached number one on the billboard charts. By this time in his life, people knew him more for his singing than his trumpet playing since his lips had become damaged by a lifetime of horn playing.
Louis was one of the very few African Americans to appear regularly in Hollywood films; he was known to bring a film to life. He appeared in 28 full-length films and many short features from 1931 to 1969. His last film in 1969 was a musical called “Hello Dolly” starring Barbra Streisand and Gene Kelly.
Louis Armstrong married again for the last time in 1942 to Lucille Wilson, a dancer at the Cotton Club where Louis and his band had been playing. They bought a home in Corona, Queens, where they lived out the rest of their days together.
He became “Ambassador Satch” for America after World War II, spreading good will around the world; he toured Europe, Africa, Japan, Australia, and South America. By the 50’s Louis had become established as an international celebrity.
Armstrong, with his great big beautiful piano key smile and his unforgettable sandpapery voice, is an American icon for Jazz lovers everywhere. He performed regularly until recurring health problems gradually put an end to his trumpet playing and singing. In the last year of his life he traveled to London twice, appeared in over a dozen television shows, and performed at the Newport Jazz Festival to celebrate his 70th birthday.
Louis died in his sleep on July 6, 1971. Since then his legend has lived on. Dizzy Gillespie once said of Louis Armstrong: "If it hadn't been for him, there would have been none of us. I want to thank Mr. Louis Armstrong for my livelihood." Miles Davis agreed: "Louis has been through all kinds of styles. You know you can't play anything on a horn Louis hasn't played." This was true for many other Jazz musicians who had been greatly influenced and inspired by the music of the great Louis Armstrong, and in my opinion the greatest Jazz musician that ever lived.
Bibliography_______________________________________________________________
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