As a black man living and working in a segregated society, he symbolized the civil rights struggle that was part of the changing America in which he lived. At the age of eleven, Armstrong began to develop an interest in music, harmonizing on street corners and playing a toy horn.
In and out of the home throughout his teenage years, Armstrong was taken under the wing of Peter Davis, who taught music there.
In the s, Armstrong performed with a number of different musical groups, and began to revolutionize the jazz world with his introduction of the extended solo. Musicians everywhere soon began to imitate his style, and Armstrong himself became a star attraction. It was on the riverboat that Armstrong honed his music reading skills and eventually had his first encounters with other jazz legends, including Bix Beiderbecke and Jack Teagarden.
Though Armstrong was content to remain in New Orleans, in the summer of , he received a call from Oliver to come to Chicago and join his Creole Jazz Band on second cornet. Armstrong accepted, and he was soon taking Chicago by storm with both his remarkably fiery playing and the dazzling two-cornet breaks that he shared with Oliver.
He made his first recordings with Oliver on April 5, ; that day, he earned his first recorded solo on "Chimes Blues.
Armstrong soon began dating the female pianist in the band, Lillian Hardin. After they married in , Hardin made it clear that she felt Oliver was holding Armstrong back. She pushed her husband to cut ties with his mentor and join Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra, the top African American dance band in New York City at the time. Armstrong joined Henderson in the fall of and immediately made his presence felt with a series of solos that introduced the concept of swing music to the band.
Armstrong had a great influence on Henderson and his arranger, Don Redman, both of whom began integrating Armstrong's swinging vocabulary into their arrangements—transforming Henderson's band into what is generally regarded as the first jazz big band.
However, Armstrong's southern background didn't mesh well with the more urban, Northern mentality of Henderson's other musicians, who sometimes gave Armstrong a hard time over his wardrobe and the way he talked. Henderson also forbade Armstrong from singing, fearing that his rough way of vocalizing would be too coarse for the sophisticated audiences at the Roseland Ballroom. While in New York, Armstrong cut dozens of records as a sideman, creating inspirational jazz with other greats such as Sidney Bechet, and backing numerous blues singers including Bessie Smith.
Today, these are generally regarded as the most important and influential recordings in jazz history; on these records, Armstrong's virtuoso brilliance helped transform jazz from an ensemble music to a soloist's art. His stop-time solos on numbers like "Cornet Chop Suey" and "Potato Head Blues" changed jazz history, featuring daring rhythmic choices, swinging phrasing and incredible high notes.
He also began singing on these recordings, popularizing wordless "scat singing" with his hugely popular vocal on 's "Heebie Jeebies. The Hot Five and Hot Seven were strictly recording groups; Armstrong performed nightly during this period with Erskine Tate's orchestra at the Vendome Theater, often playing music for silent movies.
While performing with Tate in , Armstrong finally switched from the cornet to the trumpet. A young pianist from Pittsburgh, Earl Hines, assimilated Armstrong's ideas into his piano playing.
Together, Armstrong and Hines formed a potent team and made some of the greatest recordings in jazz history in , including their virtuoso duet, "Weather Bird," and "West End Blues. The latter performance is one of Armstrong's best known works, opening with a stunning cadenza that features equal helpings of opera and the blues; with its release, "West End Blues" proved to the world that the genre of fun, danceable jazz music was also capable of producing high art.
Armstrong was featured nightly on Ain't Misbehavin' , breaking up the crowds of mostly white theatergoers nightly. That same year, he recorded with small New Orleans-influenced groups, including the Hot Five, and began recording larger ensembles. Armstrong's daring vocal transformations of these songs completely changed the concept of popular singing in American popular music, and had lasting effects on all singers who came after him, including Bing Crosby , Billie Holiday , Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.
By , Armstrong, who was now known as Satchmo, had begun appearing in movies and made his first tour of England. While he was beloved by musicians, he was too wild for most critics, who gave him some of the most racist and harsh reviews of his career.
Satchmo didn't let the criticism stop him, however, and he returned an even bigger star when he began a longer tour throughout Europe in In a strange turn of events, it was during this tour that Armstrong's career fell apart: Years of blowing high notes had taken a toll on Armstrong's lips, and, following a fight with his manager Johnny Collins — who already managed to get Armstrong into trouble with the Mafia — he was left stranded overseas by Collins.
Armstrong decided to take some time off soon after the incident, and spent much of relaxing in Europe and resting his lip. When Armstrong returned to Chicago in , he had no band, no engagements and no recording contract. His lips were still sore, and there were still remnants of his mob troubles and with Lil, who, following the couple's split, was suing Armstrong. Armstrong put his career in Glaser's hands and asked him to make his troubles disappear. Glaser did just that; within a few months, Armstrong had a new big band and was recording for Decca Records.
During this period, Armstrong set a number of African American "firsts. In , Armstrong married Hardin, who urged Armstrong to leave Oliver and try to make it on his own. A year in New York with Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra proved unsatisfying so Armstrong returned to Chicago in and began making records under his own name for the first time. The s also found Armstrong achieving great popularity on radio, in films, and with his recordings.
He performed in Europe for the first time in and returned in , staying for over a year because of a damaged lip. When he returned to Chicago in , he was a headliner on records and radio, and in jazz clubs, wowing audiences with the utter fearlessness and freedom of his groundbreaking trumpet solos.
His "scat" singing transformed vocal tradition and musicians studied his recordings to hear what a horn could do. It has been said that Armstrong used his horn like a singer's voice and used his voice like a musical instrument. Negros Who Work on Broadway From scrapbook 55, n. Jazz was becoming a worldwide phenomenon and Armstrong was its leader, as was recorded in the November issue of Music: Le Magazine du Jazz Brussels : "Armstrong arrives!
Who is Armstrong?
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