Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy
"Louis Armstrong's station in the history of jazz is umimpeachable. If it weren't for him, there wouldn't be any of us." Dizzy Gillespie, 1971
Early Days in New Orleans
Armstrong was born in one of the poorest sections of New Orleans on Aug. 4,
1901. "He was a prodigy," says art historian and curator Marc Miller, "a hard-working kid who helped support
his mother and sister by working every type of job there was, including going
out on street corners at night to sing for coins." At age 7, he bought his
first real horn--a cornet. When Armstrong was 11 years old, juvenile court
sent him to the Jones Home for Colored Waifs for firing a pistol on New
Year's Eve. While there, he had his first formal music lessons and played in
the home's brass band. After about 18 months he was released. From then on,
he largely supported himself as a musician, playing with pick-up bands and in
small clubs with his mentor Joe "King" Oliver. Oliver was one of a handful
of noted musicians in New Orleans--along with Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney
Bechet and others--who were creating a distinctive and widely popular new
band music out of blues and ragtime. Soon, sheet music publishers and record
companies would make jazz a household name.
The early 1920s saw Armstrong's popularity explode as he left New Orleans for
Chicago to play with "King" Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, and then moved on to
New York, where he influenced the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra with
improvisation and a new musical vocabulary.
When he returned to Chicago in 1926, 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.
In 1929, he returned to New York, where he performed at Connie's Inn in
Harlem and on Broadway in Connie's Hot Chocolates, and made his first
nationwide hit recordings. Jazz was becoming a worldwide phenomenon and
Armstrong was its leader, as was recorded in the November 1934 issue of Music:
Le Magazine du Jazz (Brussels): "Armstrong arrives! Who is Armstrong? The
true king of jazz. The only one who could convince those who doubt."
He was one of America's most significant artists by the late 1930s, and had
created a sensation in Europe with live performances and records. His music
had had a major effect on "swing" and the big band sound.
After World War II and though the early years of the Cold War, Armstrong
served as "Ambassador Satch," spreading good will for America around the
globe including State Department-sponsored tours and broadcasts in the '60s.
He was especially well-received in the newly independent nations of Africa,
marked by such events as a 1956 concert celebrating Ghana's independence,
attended by more than 100,000 Louis Armstrong fans.
Although he was no stranger to racial prejudice himself, Armstrong rarely
made public statements. In 1957, however, he publicly condemned the violence
that swept Little 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 firebrand in newspapers
across the country.
By the '50s, Armstrong was an established international celebrity--an icon to
musicians and lovers of jazz--and a genial, 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 past his coffin as he lay in
state at the New York National Guard Armory.
Armstrong summarized his philosophy in the spoken introduction 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,
love. That's the secret. Yeah."
Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy was funded in part by a grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency, and by the New York
State Council on the Arts. Additional support was provided by Mobil
Foundation Inc. The exhibition was part of "America's Jazz Heritage," A
Partnership of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Smithsonian
Institution. Organized by the Queens Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution
Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in cooperation with the Louis Armstrong
Archives at Queens College, City University of New York, the exhibition made
its eighth--and final--stop at the National Portrait Gallery. The Washington
showing of Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy was made possible
through the generous support of Infiniti, a Division of Nissan Motor
Corporation U.S.A.
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