00:48Louis Armstrong is considered the leading trumpeter and one of the most influential artists in jazz history, who helped develop jazz into a fine art.
01:00Louis Daniel Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, to William Armstrong, a factory worker, and Mary Albert.
01:12His family was very poor. His father abandoned the family when Louis was young. His mother often had to resort to prostitution to provide for the family.
01:24He had to drop out of school in order to work and augment his mother's meager income.
01:30He started singing on the streets for money and also began working for a Jewish family, the Karnofskys, who treated young Louis as a family member and appreciated his musical skills.
01:40Apart from monetary compensation, Armstrong was given a hot meal every evening and regular invitations to Karnofsky Shabbat dinners.
01:50One day, they even advanced him the $5 he used to buy his very first horn.
01:55As an adult, Louis Armstrong wore a star of David pendant to honor the Karnofsky family.
02:02Armstrong spent his youth singing on the street for spare change, but he didn't receive any formal musical training until age 11.
02:11He was arrested for firing a pistol in the street during a New Year's Eve celebration.
02:18The crime earned him a stint in a detention facility called the Colored Waif's Home for Boys, and it was there that Armstrong claimed that he got to develop an intimate relationship with music.
02:28He spent his 18-month sentence learning how to play bugle and cornet from the Waif's home's music teacher, Peter Davis, and eventually became a star performer in its brass band.
02:41In 1922, he moved to Chicago and joined his mentor Joe Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.
02:47Chicago was thriving at that time and offered much scope for entertainers, especially musicians.
02:53Soon, Armstrong became very famous and successful, and garnered a huge fan following.
02:58But it's a different story.
03:01And now...
03:04Not About Music
03:12Armstrong's pleasant smile earned him a lot of nicknames like, Satchelmouth, Dippermouth, and, Gatemith.
03:18Armstrong liked the nickname, Satchmo, given to him in the 1930s when a London writer mistakenly contracted the words when he met him.
03:26He went ahead to use it for an autobiography and had it engraved on some of his instruments.
03:31In his career, Lewis had a relentless touring schedule where he was known for hitting high C's on the trumpet.
03:37Armstrong spent much of his career battling severe lip damage.
03:41He played with such force that he often split his lip wide open, and he suffered from painful scar tissue.
03:48Armstrong treated his lip calluses with a special salve or even removed them himself using a razor blade,
03:54but as the years passed, he began struggling to hit his signature high notes.
03:58Lewis was so famously hard on his lips, that a certain type of lip condition is now commonly known as, Satchmo syndrome.
04:06While playing before the royal family, Lewis Armstrong gave King George V a new nickname.
04:13At His Majesty's command, several of the biggest names in jazz took their talents to Buckingham Palace, and in 1932, Armstrong was requested for a royal performance.
04:23Evidently, the show went well. According to Armstrong, that night's biggest laugh came right before his group started playing,
04:30you rascal, you. Without warning, he looked straight up at the monarch and hollered, this one's for you, Rex.
04:40During the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s, the US State Department developed a program to send jazz musicians and other entertainers on goodwill tours to improve America's image overseas.
04:52Armstrong was already known as, Ambassador Satch, for his concerts in many corners of the globe, but in 1960,
04:59he became an official cultural diplomat after he took off on a three-month, State Department-sponsored trip across Africa, Europe, and Asia.
05:07One of the most remarkable signs of Armstrong's popularity came during his stopover in the Congo's Katanga province,
05:14where the two sides in a secession crisis called a one-day truce so they could watch him play. He would later joke that he had stopped a civil war.
05:23Between 1952 and 1955, Armstrong shed 100 pounds. Losing weight proved difficult at first, but his luck changed once he learned of an herbal laxative called, Swiss Chris.
05:36The artist promptly went out, bought a box, and became a lifelong spokesman. After trying it, he said that defecation sounded like, applause.
05:45Enamored, the musician began handing out packets to admirers, loved ones, and band members. Though he was the product's biggest cheerleader,
05:53Armstrong neither requested nor received any payment from its manufacturers.
06:00In late 1963, Armstrong and his all-stars recorded the title track for an upcoming musical called, Hello Dolly.
06:08The trumpeter didn't expect much from the tune, but when the show debuted on Broadway the following year, it became a runaway hit.
06:15By May, Hello Dolly! had soared to the top of the charts, displacing two songs by the Beatles, who were then at the height of their popularity.
06:24At age 62, Armstrong became the oldest musician in American history to have a number one song.
06:30Segregation laws drove Louis Armstrong to boycott his own state.
06:37The year 1956 saw Louisiana prohibit integrated bands. Outraged, Armstrong refused to stage another concert within the state's borders.
06:47They treat me better all over the world than they do in my hometown, he said.
06:52Ain't that stupid? Jazz was born there and I remember when it was no crime for cats of any color to get together and blow.
06:59Nine years later, after this ban had finally lifted, he again took the stage in New Orleans on October 31, 1965.
07:08His music had such an important effect on jazz history that many scholars, critics, and fans call him the first great jazz soloist.
07:16Armstrong's influence extended far beyond jazz.
07:19The energetic, swinging rhythmic momentum of his playing was a major influence on soloists in every genre of American popular music.
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