louis armstrong biography harlem renaissance

How Louis Armstrong Revolutionized American Music

Jazz musician Louis Armstrong is remembered not only for his hundreds of recordings but as a lovable and humorous character who appeared in a wide swath of Hollywood films and TV shows. Many listeners identify him with the heartwarming ballad “What A Wonderful World” or the joyful “Hello Dolly.” But in the history of American and world music, he was much, more more.

Armstrong had rough beginnings and was sent to an orphanage

Armstrong was born in a poor area of New Orleans. His mother raised him as best she could after his father abandoned the family when Armstrong was a baby. As a youth, he often sang on the streets in a vocal group for pennies. He loved hearing the many brass bands that filled the city and got excited whenever a parade was nearby. Armstrong did odd jobs for a local Jewish family that loved him and bought him his first cornet when he was 10.

On New Year's Eve of 1912, Armstrong shot a pistol in the air in celebration. He was immediately arrested and, when the court decided that his mother could not raise him properly, was sent to a Waif’s Home for orphans. Life looked bleak for the youngster but music turned out to be his salvation.

King Oliver became his mentor

The disciplined atmosphere and the Waif’s Home inspired young Armstrong to work hard on mastering the cornet. When he was released two years later, he was considered a promising musician. Armstrong idolized cornetist Joe “King” Oliver, one of New Orleans’ top musicians who became a father figure for the teenager. When Oliver moved up North in 1918, he recommended that the youngster get his spot with trombonist Kid Ory's pacesetting band. Armstrong improved rapidly, learning to read music while playing on riverboats with Fate Marable’s group. In 1922 when Oliver decided to add a second cornetist to his Creole Jazz Band, which was based at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago, he sent for his protégé.

By then, Louis Armstrong had a beautiful tone, wide range and exciting style on the cornet. Early New Orleans jazz was primarily an ensemble-oriented music. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band featured four horns playing nearly all of the time, with individual heroics being largely confined to brief two or four-bar breaks and very rare one-chorus solos. Because Oliver was the lead cornetist and took care of the melody, Armstrong was mostly featured playing harmonies in ensembles, adding to the power of the group while going out of his way not to outshine its leader. However it was soon apparent to the other musicians, including pianist Lil Harden (who would soon become Armstrong’s second of four wives), that he would not be the second cornetist to anyone for long.

Armstrong changed the way jazz soloists were highlighted in the band

In 1924 Lil Armstrong persuaded her new husband to accept an offer to go to New York and join the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. Henderson had the top Black band of the era although his orchestra, while possessing fine musicians and excellent sight-readers, had not yet learned how to swing. This is where Armstrong began to change the direction of jazz.

At the time, most jazz soloists only made brief statements, emphasizing staccato phrases, staying close to the melody and often punctuating their solos with double-time phrases that were repetitive and full of effects. At Armstrong’s first rehearsal with Henderson, the other musicians initially looked down on the newcomer because of his out-of-date clothes and rural manners. But their opinions changed as soon as Armstrong played his first notes. As a cornetist (he would switch permanently to trumpet in 1926), Armstrong’s utilized legato rather than staccato phrasing. He made every note count, used space dramatically, built up his solos to a climax and “told a story” in his playing. In addition, he put a blues feeling into every song, his expressive style was voice-like and tone was so beautiful that he helped to define the sound of the trumpet itself.

It was largely due to Armstrong's powerful playing that jazz changed into a music that put the focus on brilliant and adventurous soloists. During his year with Henderson, Armstrong became a major influence not only on other brass players but on musicians of all instruments. His swinging solos were emulated by others and, by the time he moved back to Chicago in late-1925, jazz had moved a decade ahead of where it was in 1923. Soon there were many trumpeters who sounded like relatives of Armstrong. It was not until the bebop era began twenty years later that jazz trumpeters, inspired by Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis , moved beyond Armstrong to look for other musical role models.

He popularized scat singing

During 1925-28, Armstrong’s recordings with his small groups (the Hot Five, Hot Seven and his Savoy Ballroom Five), revolutionized jazz, containing some of his most brilliant trumpet playing. Those timeless sessions also introduced Armstrong as a singer. Before Armstrong, most vocalists who recorded were chosen due to their volume and ability to articulate lyrics clearly, singing in a very straight and square manner. In contrast, Armstrong’s gravelly tone was distinctive from the start and he phrased like one of his horn solos. "Heebies Jeebies," from 1926, while not the very first recording of scat-singing (which utilizes nonsense syllables instead of words), greatly popularized scatting. The legend was that, after singing a chorus of the lyrics during the recording session, Armstrong dropped the music and had to make up sounds instead since he had not memorized the words, thereby inventing scat singing. It is a great story but the smoothness of Armstrong’s singing throughout the record (there is never a sense of panic) makes one think that the mishap happened on an earlier version of the song and it was decided to keep it in the routine. In any event, the first scat singing on record had already occurred 15 years earlier.

In addition to popularizing scatting, Armstrong’s relaxed phrasing in his singing, which like his trumpet playing made perfect use of space, was a revelation to other vocalists. He altered melody lines to give them catchier rhythms, and changed lyrics when it suited his voice and his conception of the song. Among those who became influenced by his phrasing while adapting it to their own musical personalities were Bing Crosby (who brought jazz phrasing into pop music), Billie Holiday , Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald among countless others.

Armstrong often stole the show with his electric performances

While his small group recordings of 1925-28 made Armstrong a sensation among instrumentalists and singers, altering the course of jazz, it was in a third area that Armstrong became world famous. In 1929 he began recording regularly with a big band and was usually heard in that setting up until 1947. Rather than mostly performing jazz originals and New Orleans standards as earlier, Armstrong explored popular songs from the Great American Songbook, changing the compositions of Gershwin , Porter , Berlin , Rodgers and others into jazz through his interpretations.

As the dominant star of his performances and recordings, Armstrong was free to display his humorous personality much more. When it came to being an entertainer, Armstrong (who became universally known as “Satchmo”) was impossible to top. He could steal the show from anyone with his comedic abilities, lovable personality and musical brilliance. He became an international star, a household name who visited Europe a few times during the 1930s. When he broke up his big band in 1947, he formed a sextet called The Louis Armstrong All-Stars that made it possible economically for him to become a world traveler. His popularity grew steadily during his last 24 years and Armstrong became famous as jazz’s goodwill ambassador, even being nicknamed "Ambassador Satch." His recordings sold very well and such hits as “Blueberry Hill,” “Mack The Knife” and 1964’s “Hello Dolly” kept him famous and busy.

As the most accessible of all jazz performers and a universally beloved figure, Armstrong introduced jazz to a countless number of listeners while symbolizing the music for millions. His importance to jazz, whether through his solos, singing or ability to win over listeners, cannot be measured. The history of jazz, American music and music in general would be much different if there had not been Armstrong.

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Pieces of History

Louis Armstrong: Harlem Renaissance Pioneer

February is Black History Month. Visit the  National Archives website  for more information on our resources related to African American history. Today’s post, from Alyssa Moore in the National Archives History Office , looks at the legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong.

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 (although he often claimed he was born on July 4, 1900), into a world immersed in the jazz of New Orleans’ saloons, social halls, and dance clubs. Raised largely by a single mother, Mary “Mayann” Albert, Armstrong and his younger sister spent their childhood in the “Back o’ Town” neighborhood, sometimes nicknamed “The Battlefield.” He left school after fifth grade to work for the local Karnofsky family at their tailor shop. The family encouraged him to pursue his interest in music, and Armstrong used his wages to purchase his first cornet.

Armstrong’s life changed on New Year’s Eve in 1912 when he was arrested for borrowing his stepfather’s gun without permission and firing a blank into the air. He was sent to the “Colored Waif’s Home for Boys,” a segregated reform school in New Orleans. Conditions at the Home were dire, and the head of its music program, Peter Davis, took Armstrong under his wing. Davis taught him how to properly play the cornet, and Armstrong later led the Waif’s Home Brass Band.

Armstrong was released from the home after a year and a half. Now 14 years old, he decided to pursue music professionally. Armstrong began playing in brass bands on Mississippi riverboats. There he picked up valuable skills, such as learning how to sight-read music, while playing alongside other musicians. Armstrong’s talent caught the attention of New Orleans’ top cornetist, Joe “King” Oliver. Under Oliver’s mentorship, Armstrong became one of the premier musicians in New Orleans.

In 1922, Oliver invited Armstrong to join his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago. At the time, the United States was in the full swing of the Harlem Renaissance, and the city of Chicago was booming. Armstrong’s reputation skyrocketed as he and the band started making records there in 1923. He married the band’s pianist, Lillian Hardin, in 1924. Hardin recognized Armstrong’s talent and urged him to launch a solo career as a trumpet and cornet player. In 1925, Armstrong took her advice and began making records under his own name.

He assembled Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, which became, in 1927, His Hot Seven. In one year alone the group produced a staggering 26 records. Among these were the hits “Cornet Chop Suey,” “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” “Hotter Than That,” and “Potato Head Blues.”

During this era, Armstrong developed his own personal style of playing that featured improvised solos and scat vocals. While he was not the first to record scat singing, Armstrong popularized it with the first recording on which he scatted, his 1926 hit “Heebie Jeebies.” By then Armstrong was in his early 20s, but he was becoming a phenomenon. As the 1920s came to a close, he began touring and, arguably, never stopped until his death in 1971.

Throughout the 1930s, Armstrong reached audiences around the world. As he toured, he continued to gain popularity on the radio and appeared in several films. He performed in Europe for the first time in 1932 and again in 1933. Returning to the U.S. in 1935, Armstrong began touring the United States with a 16-piece big band ensemble. By 1947, though, big bands started to go out of style. Armstrong then started a small group named Louis Armstrong and His All Stars. 

By the 1950s, Armstrong was a beloved American icon with an international fanbase. The Department of State sought to capitalize on Armstrong as a cultural ambassador and scheduled him to tour part of the Communist Bloc in 1965 as an unofficial goodwill ambassador with the intention of countering Communist propaganda. He was dubbed “Ambassador Satch,” after his nickname “Satchmo.”

Years of intense touring finally took its toll on Armstrong. Playing the trumpet is notoriously hard on the performer’s lips, and Armstrong suffered from lip damage for most of his life. During one of his European tours, Armstrong developed an ulceration so severe that he was forced to stop performing for a year. Eventually he began using salves and creams and also cutting off scar tissue with a razor blade.

Armstrong then suffered from his first heart attack in 1959. Despite his declining health, in 1964, Armstrong recorded his biggest-selling record, “Hello, Dolly!” It knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making Armstrong the oldest artist to have a number one song.

After receiving treatment for heart and kidney problems in 1968, his physicians advised him to take a break from playing. But Armstrong continued to practice every day in his Corona, Queens, home where he lived with his fourth wife, Lucille. In 1968, Armstrong recorded his final hit “What a Wonderful World.” He returned to live performances in 1970 and passed away in his sleep on July 6, 1971.

Today Armstrong is recognized as one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, a catalyst behind the revival of African American culture in the U.S., and a pioneer who ushered in a new era of jazz music. On February 21, 1949, he was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine, and in 1937, when Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallée on a CBS radio network, he became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast.  

He played more than 300 performances every year for 30 years. In recognition of Armstrong’s monumental legacy and lasting contribution to the genre of jazz, his home in Queens was designated a National Landmark in 1976 . Today the Louis Armstrong House presents concerts and educational programs while also making its archival materials available for public research.

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Harlem Jazz and Louis Armstrong: His Life and Impact

Sion Kim 02.24.2021

        This month, the month of February, is officially observed and celebrated as Black History Month. It is also known as the African-American History Month - the time when we remember and celebrate the history and the accomplishments of numerous African Americans who are recognized in various fields. Jazz is one of those accomplishments that are widely recognized and appreciated by people all over the world. It has greatly impacted people and music since the 1920s and it continues to do so today.         The genre of jazz blossomed in the 1920s, after when the era of Civil War (1861-1865) and the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877) ended. During this time period, African Americans who had previously been enslaved were still treated horribly with inequality and racism. Many of those who were living in the South of the United States moved to the North, searching for a better life for themselves and for their family. This moving from the South to the North, which continued for about 50 years, is called the Great Migration. It led the African Americans who gathered in the North to begin the Harlem Renaissance in the city of Harlem, Manhattan, New York. The Harlem Renaissance was “a blossoming (c. 1918-37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history” (Britannica). One of the pioneers and the most well-known African American musicians of this time period is Louis Armstrong. He and his music inspired and influenced other African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance.         Louis Armstrong was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and a singer. He was born in 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana to a couple suffering from poverty. His family did not last long because his father abandoned his family and his mother did not take care of him. Instead of his parents, he was raised by his grandmother and he had to quit school in 5th grade in order to support himself. In 1912, he was sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys because he got arrested by a police officer for firing his stepfather’s gun in the air during a New Year’s Eve celebration. Interestingly, his love for music began there. While staying there, he was given music lessons and taught how to play the cornet, which is a brass instrument similar to the trumpet. After being released from that place in 1914, he sought to begin his career as a musician as he worked to support himself.         Despite his unfortunate conditions, with the mentorship of Joe “King” Oliver, Armstrong continued to grow as a musician and got to join a band in Chicago in 1922. His musical career expanded as he joined Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra and recorded multiple solos with the jazz orchestra. In 1925, he formed a band named Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five. He became well-known for his solo recordings and for his songs such as “La Vie En Rose” and “What a Wonderful World” which are still greatly loved and listened to by people. Moreover, Armstrong became famous for his rhythmic style called swing and became the first African American jazz musician to write an autobiography and to host a nationally sponsored radio show.         Just like Louis Armstrong did, numerous African American artists such as Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith left their mark. They have led the way to begin the era of African American artistic and cultural bloom in the United States of America. By doing so, they showed the world that they are talented intellectual beings who deserve to be treated as full human beings when the others were telling them otherwise. Their music continues to impact people all over the world and their legacy remains for us to celebrate.

Sources Hutchison, George. (2019, August 19). “Harlem Renaissance.” Retrieved from        https://www.britannica.com/event/Harlem-Renaissance-American-literature-and-art History.com Editors. (2021, January 21). “Harlem Renaissance.” Retrieved from  https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance

The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.

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Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 4, 1901. He was raised by his mother Mayann in a neighborhood so dangerous it was called “The Battlefield.” He only had a fifth-grade education, dropping out of school early to go to work. An early job working for the Jewish Karnofsky family allowed Armstrong to make enough money to purchase his first cornet.

On New Year’s Eve 1912, he was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. There, under the tutelage of Peter Davis, he learned how to properly play the cornet, eventually becoming the leader of the Waif’s Home Brass Band. Released from the Waif’s Home in 1914, Armstrong set his sights on becoming a professional musician. Mentored by the city’s top cornetist, Joe “King” Oliver, Armstrong soon became one of the most in-demand cornetists in town, eventually working steadily on Mississippi riverboats.

In 1922, King Oliver sent for Armstrong to join his band in Chicago. Armstrong and Oliver became the talk of the town with their intricate two-cornet breaks and started making records together in 1923. By that point, Armstrong began dating the pianist in the band, Lillian Hardin. In 1924, Armstrong married Hardin, who urged Armstrong to leave Oliver and try to make it on his own. A year in New York with Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra proved unsatisfying so Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1925 and began making records under his own name for the first time.

Hotter Than That

The records by Louis Armstrong and His Five–and later, Hot Seven–are the most influential in jazz. Armstrong’s improvised solos transformed jazz from an ensemble-based music into a soloist’s art, while his expressive vocals incorporated innovative bursts of scat singing and an underlying swing feel. By the end of the decade, the popularity of the Hot Fives and Sevens was enough to send Armstrong back to New York, where he appeared in the popular Broadway revue, “Hot Chocolates.” He soon began touring and never really stopped until his death in 1971.

The 1930s also found Armstrong achieving great popularity on radio, in films, and with his recordings. He performed in Europe for the first time in 1932 and returned in 1933, staying for over a year because of a damaged lip. Back in America in 1935, Armstrong hired Joe Glaser as his manager and began fronting a big band, recording pop songs for Decca, and appearing regularly in movies. He began touring the country in the 1940s.

Ambassador Satch

In 1947, the waning popularity of the big bands forced Armstrong to begin fronting a small group, Louis Armstrong and His All Stars. Personnel changed over the years but this remained Armstrong’s main performing vehicle for the rest of his career. He had a string of pop hits beginning in 1949 and started making regular overseas tours, where his popularity was so great, he was dubbed “Ambassador Satch.”

In America, Armstrong had been a great Civil Rights pioneer, breaking down numerous barriers as a young man. In the 1950s, he was sometimes criticized for his onstage persona and called an “Uncle Tom” but he silenced critics by speaking out against the government’s handling of the “Little Rock Nine” high school integration crisis in 1957.

Armstrong continued touring the world and making records with songs like “Blueberry Hill” (1949), “Mack the Knife” (1955) and “Hello, Dolly! (1964),” the latter knocking the Beatles off the top of the pop charts at the height of Beatlemania.

Good Evening Everybody

The many years of constant touring eventually wore down Armstrong, who had his first heart attack in 1959 and returned to intensive care at Beth Israel Hospital for heart and kidney trouble in 1968. Doctors advised him not to play but Armstrong continued to practice every day in his Corona, Queens home, where he had lived with his fourth wife, Lucille, since 1943. He returned to performing in 1970 but it was too much, too soon and he passed away in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a few months after his final engagement at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.

Louis talks about the Karnofskys

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The Morning

Revisiting the harlem renaissance.

Why the era still resonates a century later.

By Veronica Chambers

I’m a Brooklyn girl, but I’m low-key obsessed with the Harlem Renaissance. I’ve written a book about the era and taught its literature at universities. I can, and often do, spend whole weekends rereading Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, listening to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, thumbing through books featuring artwork by Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage.

But what brings me back to the Renaissance again and again is the way it changed this country. When the movement started a century ago, the United States was finally creating our own distinctly original culture — songs and dances, paintings and novels. We were looking less to Europe as a model of creativity. And in this moment — the 1920s, in New York City, both uptown and downtown — we become more wholly American.

This year, a team of Times journalists marked the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance with a series examining its vibrant history .

We began with a little-known dinner party that took place on March 21, 1924, an unprecedented interracial gathering that included such luminaries as W.E.B. Du Bois, Carl Van Doren and Alain Locke, as well as up-and-coming writers like Gwendolyn Bennett and Countee Cullen.

Even today, in New York, this kind of gathering is rare. The purpose of the dinner was to marry talent to opportunity, connecting writers with editors and critics, and it was a wild success: In the decade after the dinner, Renaissance writers published more than 40 volumes of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, works that transformed the literary landscape of our nation. You can read about the dinner party (and the friendships, feuds and affairs that it launched) in this piece .

The Harlem Renaissance is not only a historical story. The 1920s were called the Jazz Age because the music, and the movements that it inspired, gave the decade a distinctly American groove, one that persists to this day. Imani Perry — who recently won the National Book Award for her work, “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation” — is also, as it turns out, a dance enthusiast. For our series, she interviewed three choreographers who are keeping the dance traditions of the Renaissance alive in their work. For days, the studios of The Times were filled with some of the finest dancers in the nation doing the lindy hop, swing and gravity-defying tap routines. You can see the results (and dance along) here, with stunning video and photography .

Harlem in the 1920s was a powerful space of sexual exploration and freedom. Many argue that the neighborhood was as important to the development of queer life in New York as the West Village was, in part because it offered queer men and women a chance to interact without the racial restrictions of the era. Working with The Times’s graphics team, we created a map of queer Harlem , one that you could open on your phone for a self-guided tour. It features places like Hamilton Lodge, which held drag balls going back to the 19th century; clubs where entertainers like Ma Rainey, Gladys Bentley and Jimmie Daniels performed; and homes where Alain Locke, Ethel Waters, Langston Hughes and so many others lived, loved and made art.

Years ago, Ann Douglas, author of “Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s,” a seminal text on the subject of New York in the 1920s, told The Times: “I have the unfashionable posture of loving my country. I don’t mean in the sense of the Pledge of Allegiance, but in that I believe America was founded on complex social, religious and political ideas and feelings, and that it is still the most exciting culture, the one where there is the most hope for the most people.” We invite you to read through these pieces, which represent a remarkable array of American ingenuity and creativity, a celebration of not only our past but all that is yet to come.

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During the Harlem Renaissance, some Black people hosted rent parties — celebrations with an undercurrent of desperation in the face of racism and discrimination.

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The women who ran libraries during the Renaissance didn’t just build collections. They built communities of writers and readers .

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By Elisabeth Egan

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By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

This week’s subject for The Interview is Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, who was eager to move past the presidential election and dismissive of the idea that the result is a rebuke of the Democratic Party.

When you look at what happened on Tuesday, you can see it in two ways. You can see that the country embraced Trump or you can see that they rejected the Democratic Party more broadly and the Biden-Harris administration. How do you see it?

Well, I don’t see the Democratic Party more broadly. We lost two seats in the House, and we expect to pick up some more to offset that. Right now, we’re about even. So I don’t think whatever you said, with all due respect, applies to the House Democrats.

House races are run very locally. They message specifically for their district. But the brand of the Democratic Party over all seems to have been hurt this election cycle.

Well, we lost the presidential election, [but] in many cases, our Democrats in the House ran ahead of the presidential ticket. So, your branding that we all got rejected, we didn’t. We’re still in the fight right now, and it’s going to be a very close call. I don’t see it as an outright rejection of the Democratic Party. Now, I do have a discomfort level with some of the Democrats right now who are saying, “Oh, we abandoned the working class.” No, we didn’t. That’s who we are. We are the kitchen table, working-class party of America.

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Veronica Chambers is the editor of Narrative Projects, a team dedicated to starting up multi-layered series and packages at The Times. More about Veronica Chambers