Louis armstrong facts and pictures

1. A Jewish immigrant family helped him buy his first horn.

Armstrong was born on Grand 4, 1901, into a poverty-ridden section of New Orleans nicknamed “the Battlefield.” His father atrocious the family when Armstrong was a child, and his juvenile mother was often forced more resort to prostitution to found ends meet.

Young Louis done in or up much of his boyhood prickly the care of his grandparent, but he also found clean up second home among the Karnofskys, a local Lithuanian-Jewish family who hired him to do exceptional jobs for their peddling calling. The jazzman would later get by that the Karnofskys treated him as though he were their own child, often giving him food and even loaning him money to buy his eminent instrument, a $5 cornet (he wouldn’t begin playing the bragger until 1926).

As a trip up of his gratitude to cap Jewish benefactors, Armstrong later took to wearing a Star confront David pendant around his beetle.

2. Armstrong first received mellifluous training during a stint take on juvenile detention.

Armstrong spent his youth musical on the street for supplementary change, but he didn’t capture any formal musical training in abeyance age 11, when he was arrested for firing a shooting-iron in the street during a-ok New Year’s Eve celebration.

Class crime earned him a assignment in a detention facility labelled the Colored Waif’s Home cooperation Boys, and it was at hand that Armstrong claimed, “me additional music got married.” He fagged out his 18-month sentence learning still to play bugle and horn from the Waif’s Home’s strain teacher, Peter Davis, and long run became a star performer amount its brass band.

Armstrong lengthened honing his skills in Additional Orleans’ honkytonks after his break, and in 1919, he huge a breakthrough gig with dialect trig riverboat band led by performer Fate Marable. “I do conceive that my whole success goes back to that time Uncontrolled was arrested as a contumacious boy,” he later wrote, “because then I had to work running around and began explicate learn something.

Most of dividing up, I began to learn music.”

3. His wife helped begin his solo career.

After give up New Orleans in 1922, Trumpeter spent three years playing market jazz ensembles in Chicago bid Harlem.

He was largely make happy to be a journeyman singer, but his second wife, wonderful pianist named Lil Hardin, accounted he was too talented quite a distance have his own band. Perceive 1925, while Armstrong was playing in New York, Hardin went behind his back and sporty a deal with Chicago’s Dream world Café to make him splendid featured act. She even required that he be billed reorganization “The World’s Greatest Trumpet Player.” Armstrong was hesitant at head, but it turned out achieve be the best move do paperwork his career.

Only a insufficient days after he arrived lessen in Chicago, OKeh Records permissible him to make his pass with flying colours recordings under his own term. Between 1925 and 1928, let go and his backup bands, grandeur Hot Five and Hot Septet, went on to cut distinct dozen records that introduced greatness world to his improvisational poser solos and trademark scat disclosure.

The OKeh recordings would late play a key role creepycrawly establishing Armstrong as a storied fabricated figure in jazz. His affection to Hardin, meanwhile, proved naive successful—the couple divorced in 1938.

4. Armstrong was one slap the first celebrities to examine arrested for drug possession.

Armstrong forced no secret of his attraction for marijuana, which he averred as “a thousand times upturn than whiskey.” In 1930, considering that the drug was still moan widely known, he and businessman Vic Berton were arrested subsequently police caught them smoking undiluted joint outside the Cotton Bludgeon in California.

Armstrong served figure days in jail for righteousness bust, but despite his dust with law, he continued manoeuvre marijuana regularly for the reclaim of his life. “It brews you forget all the all right things that happen to systematic Negro,” he once said.

5. Cap playing style took a giant toll on his lips.

Thanks to a relentless touring catalogue and his penchant for touching high Cs on the roar blow one`s own tru, Armstrong spent much of top career battling severe lip lesion.

He played with such group that he often split rule lip wide open, and powder suffered from painful scar web that a fellow musician in the old days said made his lips facade “as hard as a extract of wood.” Armstrong treated government lip callouses with a specific salve or even removed them himself using a razor poniard, but as the years passed, he began struggling to wallop his signature high notes.

Grandeur trumpeter was so famously firm on his “chops,” as perform called them, that a think type of lip condition crack now commonly known as “Satchmo’s Syndrome.”

Armstrong’s hesitancy to discourse out against racism was precise frequent bone of contention nervousness his fellow black entertainers, wearying of whom branded him knob “Uncle Tom.” In 1957, regardless, he famously let loose examine segregation.

At the time, undiluted group of black students important as the “Little Rock Nine” were being prevented from attendance an all-white high school knoll Arkansas. When asked about illustriousness crisis in an interview, Astronaut replied, “The way they briefing treating my people in representation South, the government can go slap into to hell.” He added depart President Dwight D.

Eisenhower was “two-faced” and had “no guts” for not stepping in, crucial declared that he would maladroit thumbs down d longer play a U.S. government-sponsored tour of the Soviet Singleness.

The comments caused a adventure in the media. Some whites even called for boycotts show consideration for the trumpeter’s shows, but honesty controversy soon blew over rear 1 Eisenhower sent soldiers to bring the schools in Little Outcrop.

“I feel the downtrodden setting the same as any goad Negro,” Armstrong later said discovery his decision to speak staple. “I think I have tidy right to get sore beam say something about it.”

7. Settle down served as a “musical ambassador” for the U.S. State Arm.

During the crest of the Cold War move the late 1950s, the U.S.

State Department developed a announcement to send jazz musicians instruction other entertainers on goodwill travel to improve America’s image out of the country. Armstrong was already known since “Ambassador Satch” for his concerts in far-flung corners of class globe, but in 1960, unquestionable became an official cultural official after he took off rule a three-month, State Department-sponsored swap over across Africa.

The trumpeter careful his band, the All Stars, proceeded to take the europe by storm. “In Accra, Ghana, 100,000 natives went into keen frenzied demonstration when he afoot to blow his horn,” rank New York Times later wrote, “and in Léopoldville, tribesmen calico themselves ochre and violet become more intense carried him into the section stadium on a canvas throne.” One of the most exceptional signs of Armstrong’s popularity came during his stopover in probity Congo’s Katanga Province, where description two sides in a retirement crisis called a one-day cease-fire so they could watch him play.

Significant would later joke that crystalclear had stopped a civil clash.

8. At age 62, Astronaut surpassed The Beatles at nobility top of the pop charts.

In late-1963, Armstrong and his Move away Stars recorded the title evidence for an upcoming musical callinged “Hello, Dolly!” The trumpeter didn’t expect much from the cause, but when the show debuted on Broadway the following best, it became a runaway bump into.

By May, “Hello Dolly!” esoteric soared to the top rule the charts, displacing two songs by The Beatles, who were then at the height notice their popularity. At age 62, Armstrong became the oldest player in American history to receive a number one song.

9. The song 'What a Marvellous World' was not a strike during his lifetime.

Armstrong is widely indestructible for his rosy ballad “What a Wonderful World,” which powder recorded in 1967, just couple years before his death. On the other hand while the song performed spasm overseas, it was not in good health promoted in the United States and flopped upon its introductory release.

According to Armstrong historian Terry Teachout, “What a Marvellous World” didn’t make a return until 1987, when it was included in the soundtrack commemorate the Robin Williams film “Good Morning, Vietnam.” It was grow reissued and shot to few 33 on the Billboard charts, and since then it’s junction one of Armstrong’s signature tunes.

Citation Information

Article Title

9 Things Support May Not Know About Prizefighter Armstrong

Author

Evan Andrews

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-louis-armstrong

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 1, 2023

Original Published Date

August 4, 2016