I say that Karen Armstrong isn't to be found, much, on YouTube, was because my search was too narrow. I was searched on the title of the book as ...
 | Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician / Junction Cover: February 21, 1949, Art Print by TIME Magazine Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician / TIME Overspread: February 21, 1949, Art Print by TIME Magazine barewalls |
Why is Louie Armstrong important to history?
Armstrong was a charismatic, innovative trouper whose improvised soloing was the main influence for a fundamental change in jazz, shifting its focus from collective improvisation to the single-handed player and improvised soloing. One of the most famous jazz musicians of the 20th century, he was first known as a cornet player, then as a bellow player, and toward the end of his career he was best known as a vocalist and became one of the most influential jazz singers.
Contents [hide]
1 Premature life
2 Early career
3 The All Stars
4 Personality
5 Music
6 Circulars, Radio, films and TV
7 Death
8 Awards and honors
8.1 Grammy Awards
8.2 Grammy Castle of Fame
8.3 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
8.4 Inductions and honors
8.5 Heritage
9 Discography
10 Samples
11 Notes
12 References
13 External linksRecoilEarly life
Armstrong often stated in public interviews that he was born on July 4, 1900 (Independence Day in the USA), a date that has been illustrious in many biographies. Although he died in 1971, it wasn't until the mid-1980s that his true birth date of August 4, 1901 was discovered through the study of baptismal records.[5] He was recorded as an illegitimate black child.
Armstrong was born into a very poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana, the grandson of slaves. He listless his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans, known as “Back of Town”, as his papa, William Armstrong (1881–1922), abandoned the family when Louis was an infant, and took up with another woman. His mother, Mary Albert Armstrong (1886–1942), then left Louis and his junior sister Beatrice Armstrong Collins (1903–1987) in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong and at times, his Uncle Isaac. At five, he respond back to live with his mother and her relatives, and saw his father only in parades. He attended the Fisk School for Boys where he likely had his first vulnerability to Creole music. He brought in a little money as a paperboy and also by finding discarded food and selling it to restaurants but it wasn’t enough to keep his materfamilias from prostitution. He hung out in dance halls particularly the “Funky Butt” which was the closest to his habitat, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille. He hauled coal to Storyville, the famed red-light district, and listened to the bands playing in the brothels and cavort halls, especially Pete Lala’s where Joe "King" Oliver performed and other famous musicians would drop in to jam.
Armstrong grew up at the bottom of the sociable ladder, in a highly segregated city, but one which lived in a constant fervor of music, which was generally called “ragtime”, and not yet “jazz”. Teeth of the hard early days, Armstrong seldom looked back at his youth as the worst of times but instead drew gusto from it, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans...It has delineated me something to live for.”[6]
After dropping out of the Fisk School at eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys in similar straits as he, and they sang in the streets for monetary. He also started to get into trouble. Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong (then 11) to play by ear at Dago High-class's Tonk in New Orleans,[7] although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. His first cornet was bought with loot loaned to him by the Karnofskys, a Russian-Jewish immigrant family who had a junk hauling business and gave him odd jobs. To phrase gratitude towards the Karnofskys, who took him in as almost a family member, and fed and nurtured him, Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the ease of his life.[8]
Armstrong seriously developed his cornet playing in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, where he had been sent multiple generation for general delinquency, most notably for a long term after firing his stepfather's pistol into the air at a New Year's Eve celebration, as the fuzz records confirm. Professor Peter Davis (who frequently appeared at the Home at the request of its administrator, Skipper Joseph Jones)[9] instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Finally, Davis made Armstrong the band leader. The Home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen year old began to heave attention to his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career.[10]At fourteen he was released from the Home, and organic again with his father and new stepmother, and then back to his mother and also back to the streets and its temptations. Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponce’s where Black Benny became his patron and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night.
He also played in the city's frequent brass crew parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, and above all, Joe "Bigwig" Oliver, who acted as a mentor and father figure to the young musician. Later, he played in the brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and first started traveling with the well-reputed band of Fate Marable which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as "successful to the University," since it gave him a much wider experience working with written arrangements.
In 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and he patient his position in Kid Ory's band, then regarded as the best hot jazz group in New Orleans. Armstrong replaced his mentor and played subordinate cornet. Soon he was promoted to first cornet and he also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band, a society gang.[11]
Early career
MugglesOn March 19, 1918, Louis married Daisy Parker from Gretna, Louisiana. They adopted a 3-date-old boy, Clarence Armstrong, whose mother, Louis's cousin Flora, died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally invalid (result of a head injury at an early age) and Louis would spend the rest of his life taking care of him.[12] Louis's connection to Parker failed quickly and they separated. She died shortly after the divorce.
Through his riverboat experiences, Armstrong’s musicianship began to adult. At twenty, he could now read music and he started to be featured in extended trumpet solos, one of the first jazzmen to do this, injecting his own personality and couch into his solo turns. He had learned how to create a unique sound, and also started using singing and patter in his proceeding.[13]In 1922, Armstrong joined the exodus to Chicago, where he had been invited by his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to join his Cant Jazz Band, and where he could make a sufficient income so that he no longer need to supplement his music with day labor jobs. It was a increase time in Chicago and though race relations were poor, the “Windy City” was teeming with jobs for Blacks, who were production good wages in factories and had plenty to spend on entertainment.
Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz flock in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of the jazz universe. Armstrong lived like a sovereign in Chicago, in his own apartment with his own private bath (his first). Excited as he was to be in Chicago, he began his career-long pastime of handwriting nostalgic letters to friends in New Orleans. As Armstrong’s reputation grew, he was challenged to “cutting contests” by hornmen irritating to displace the new phenom, who could blow two hundred high C’s in a row.[14] Armstrong made his first recordings on the Gennett and Okeh labels (jazz proceeding were starting to boom across the country), including taking some solos and breaks, while playing second cornet in Oliver's line in 1923. At this time, he met Hoagy Carmichael (with whom he would collaborate later) who was introduced by pal Bix Beiderbecke, who now had his own Chicago band.
Armstrong enjoyed busy with Oliver, but Louis' second wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, urged him to seek more prominent billing and produce his newer style away from the influence of Oliver. She had her husband play classical music in church concerts to amplify his skill and improve his solo play, and she prodded him into wearing more stylish attire to make him look perceptive and to better offset his growing girth. Lil’s influence eventually undermined Armstrong’s relationship with his mentor, especially in the matter of his salary and additional moneys that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924 and Armstrong orthodox an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African–American band of the day. Armstrong switched to the rant to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence upon Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be reputed by listening to the records made by the band during this period.
Armstrong quickly adapted to the more tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing bellow and even experimenting with the trombone, and the other members quickly took up Armstrong’s emotional, expressive pulse. Soon his act included singing and persuasive tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers.[15]The Henderson Orchestra was playing in the best venues for creamy-only patrons, including the famed Roseland Ballroom, featuring the classy arrangements of Don Redman. Duke Ellington’s ensemble would go to Roseland to catch Armstrong’s performances and young hornmen around town tried in vain to outplay him, splitting their mouth in their attempts.
During this time, Armstrong also made many recordings on the side, arranged by an old friend from New Orleans, pianist Clarence Williams; these included wee jazz band sides with the Williams Blue Five (some of the best pairing Ar
Armstrong was a charismatic, innovative performer whose improvised soloing was the main influence for a fundamental change in jazz, motion its focus from collective improvisation to the solo player and improvised soloing. One of the most famous jazz musicians of the 20th century, he was first well-known as a cornet player, then as a trumpet player, and toward the end of his career he was best known as a vocalist and became one of the most influential jazz singers.
After Earth War II and though the early years of the Cold War, Armstrong served as "Ambassador Satch," spreading good will for America around the globe through State Department-sponsored tours and broadcasts in the '60s. He was especially well-received in the newly independent nations of Africa, flecked by such events as a 1956 concert celebrating Ghana's independence, attended by more than 100,000 Louis Armstrong fans.
Although he was no alien to racial prejudice himself, Armstrong rarely made public statements. In 1957, however, he publicly condemned the violence that swept Low Rock over school integration and how it was handled. "Do you dig me when I say, 'I have a right to blow my top over injustice?'" he said. For this statement, Armstrong was called a troublemaker in newspapers across the country.
By the '50s, Armstrong was an established international celebrity--an icon to musicians and lovers of jazz--and a affable, infectiously optimistic presence wherever he appeared. His death on July 6, 1971, was front-page news around the world, and more than 25,000 mourners filed gone and forgotten his coffin as he lay in state at the New York National Guard Armory.
Armstrong summarized his philosophy in the spoken orientation to his 1970 recording It's A Wonderful World. "And all I'm saying is, see what a wonderful world it would be if only we would give it a chance. Love, baby, adore. That's the secret. Yeah."
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