Inspirational Quotes by Louis Armstrong (American Jazz Musician)

Louis Armstrong (1900–71,) fully Daniel Louis Armstrong, popularly known as Satchmo (from Satchelmouth) or Pops, is generally acclaimed by critics as the most outstanding jazz performer ever. The first major jazz virtuoso, he was a trumpet and cornet player, bandleader, and singer with a rich, gravelly voice. He made famous such jazz and pop classics as “West End Blues,” “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” “Hello, Dolly,” and “What a Wonderful World.”

Born in New Orleans, Armstrong learned to play the cornet while serving a sentence for delinquency in the city’s “home for colored waifs.” After he was released from the institution in 1914, he worked as a musician in local bars, getting encouragement from King Oliver, New Orleans’s leading cornettist.

In 1919, Armstrong replaced Oliver in the band led by Edward ‘Kid’ Ory and played on Mississippi riverboats. In 1922, he joined Oliver’s band in Chicago, and recordings by the Creole Jazz Band, featuring the cornet partnership, set new standards of musicianship in early jazz. Armstrong surpassed these standards a few years later, recording with his ‘Hot Five’ and ‘Hot Seven’ studio groups, when his playing moved beyond the constraints of New Orleans-style collective improvisation towards the virtuoso delivery for which he later gained world renown. He had a significant influence on Dixieland jazz as played by a small ensemble featuring collective and solo improvisation.

In 1926, Armstrong started his celebrated recording with ‘Scat singing,’ imitating an instrument with the voice using abstract vocables. His group included his then-wife, Lilian Armstrong (1898–1971,) who became a celebrated jazz pianist after their divorce in 1931.

From the late 1920s, Armstrong, then playing trumpet, began two decades as a star soloist and singer with various big bands. In 1947, he formed his first All-Stars group and returned to small-group jazz. Armstrong made the first of many overseas tours in 1933. He appeared with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the film High Society (1956) and over 50 films as a musician and entertainer.

Biographies include James Lincoln Collier’s Louis Armstrong: An American Genius (1983.)

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