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Armstrong, Louis (“Satchmo”)
5 articles on Armstrong, Louis (“Satchmo”)
Armstrong, Louis
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 2638 Includes: Background and Early Career. | The World's Greatest Trumpet Player. | The Great “Satchmo.” | “Ambassador Satch” and King of the Zulus. | Bibliography(b. 4 August 1901; d. 6 July 1971), jazz cornet player, trumpeter, and vocalist. Louis Armstrong's musical style and charismatic personality transformed jazz from a “raucous” and “vulgar” regional form of dance music into an internationally beloved popular art form. Also known as “Satchel-mouth” and “Pops,” Armstrong first gained renown as an innovative cornet player and trumpeter whose creative energy helped bring about the movement of jazz into swing in the 1920s. But he also achieved fame as a vocalist whose distinctive style, including some specific features identified as “Afro-American,” influenced scores of jazz singers and thus played a significant role in shaping popular music of the twentieth century.Armstrong was born into a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana, ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 2582 Includes: Armstrong, Jazz, and American Popular Culture | The Troubling Legacy of Armstrong's Persona | Armstrong's Early Years | Move to the North | Defining Qualities of Armstrong's Trumpet Playing | As Vocalist and Entertainer | Social Critic and Ambassador to the World | Bibliography1901–1971
African American trumpet player and vocalist, the most significant soloist in the history of jazz. More than anyone else, Louis Armstrong was responsible for legitimizing and popularizing jazz for a wider public. A much-admired jazz trumpeter and gravel-voiced vocalist, Armstrong was also a consummate entertainer, steadily expanding his career from instrumentalist to popular singer, to film and television personality, and, ultimately, to cultural icon. He acquired many nicknames throughout his life, including Dippermouth, Pops, and Satchelmouth—the latter often contracted to Satchmo. As Satchmo, he was instantly identifiable around the world, decades before Prince Madonna, or Sting. The international appeal of his music in effect made Armstrong the American goodwill ambassador to the world. ...
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Source: African American National Biography
(4 Aug. 1901–6 Jul. 1971) , jazz trumpeter and singer, known universally as “Satchmo” and later as “Pops,” was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of William Armstrong, a boiler stoker in a turpentine plant, and Mary Est “Mayann” Albert, a laundress. Abandoned by his father shortly after birth, Armstrong was raised by his paternal grandmother, Josephine, until he was returned to his mother's care at age five. Mother and son moved from Jane Alley, in a violence‐torn slum, to an only slightly better area, Franklyn and Perdido streets, where nearby cheap cabarets gave the boy his first introduction to the new kind of music, jazz, that was developing in New Orleans. Although Armstrong claims to have heard the early jazz cornetist Buddy Boldenwhen he was about age five, this incident may1911 ...
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Source: The Oxford Companion to United States History
Word Count: 474(1900?–1971), jazz trumpeter, band leader, vocalist. One of the twentieth century's premier jazz musicians, Louis Armstrong was born in poverty in New Orleans. He first learned to play brass instruments in Joseph Jones's Colored Waifs' Home. His skills matured in settings where ensemble jazz improvisation first evolved, including street parades, dance halls, and Fate Marable's Mississippi riverboat band. Armstrong's considerable influence as a jazz pioneer began with membership in the bands of Edward (“Kid”) Ory (1918) and Joseph (“King”) Oliver (1922), with whom he first recorded in 1923. Armstrong also collaborated with blues musicians like Bessie Smith.A virtuoso trumpet soloist, Armstrong through his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925–1928) disseminated jazz improvisation to a wide audience. His ...
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Source: Grove Music Online
(b. New Orleans, 4 Aug 1901; d. New York, 6 July 1971 ). American jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader. Armstrong’s father abandoned his mother around the time of his birth, and the family lived in poverty in New Orleans, near the saloons and dance halls whose music, along with what he heard and sang in church, was his first musical influence. As a child he worked at odd jobs and began performing on the streets with a vocal quartet. In 1912 he was arrested for delinquency and sent to the Colored Waifs’ Home in New Orleans, where he started to play the cornet and received his first formal musical tuition from Peter Davis, a member of the staff. After his release at the age of about 14, he again held various jobs and lived with his mother. He was befriended, taught and given his own cornet by his lifelong idol, the jazz cornettist Joe ‘King’ ...
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