Biography of Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was born in one of the poorest sections in New Orleans, August 4, 1901. Louis a hard-working kid who helped his mother and sister by working every type of job there was, including going out on street corners at night to singing for coins. Slowly making money, Louis bought his first horn, a cornet. At age eleven Armstrong was sent to juvenile Jones Home for the colored waifs for firing a pistol on New Year’s Eve. While in jail Armstrong received his first formal music lesson from one of the friends he met their, he later played in Home’s brass band that was located in the same facility. Armstrong gained experience from the band. After a year and six month he was released. After being released he considered himself as a musician.

Armstrong, in his journey to fame he played in pick-up bands. In 1922 Louis received a telegram from his mentor Joe Oliver, asking him to join his Creole Jazz Band at Lincoln Gardens (459 East 31st Street) in Chicago. Later joining small clubs with

Oliver, along with Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet and others who created a distinctive and wildly popular new band out of blues and ragtime. By 1924 small companies and recorded companies would make jazz their household name.

By 1926, Armstrong was hired as featured soloist with the Carroll Dickerson band, at sunset café, for the first time his name was up in lights, as “the world’s greatest trumpet player”. Posters were hanged up advertising Armstrong,”Louis Armstrong in person!” Armstrong and his desire of greatness moved wit ha number of different musical groups, soon realizing that his style was best suited as a smaller ensemble. He played in big popular bands to reach more popularity. Armstrong established jazz as music that pri...

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...e once sealed with his music. Armstrong amplitude the reality of world through his trumpet and his singing. Armstrong considered the movement as an individual expression, many showing it by art, literature, and writing. But he considered the best way of getting peoples attention, which was the popular art at that time, jazz.

Armstrong and other African Americans were a great part of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was not a movement that was organized it just caught the country by surprise. African-American women were also a part of this movement. Talented singers such as Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker and Bessie Smith took their place in the Jazz field and struggled with the barriers that men had already set up. Although the Harlem Renaissance ended in the 1930s, Jazz and Blues continued to be a part of music history.