Acrobat Music

Louis Armstrong, legendary jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, died on 6th July 1971

Louis Armstrong, legendary jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, died on 6th July 1971

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4th 1901 to a poor family in new Orleans, and rose to become one of the major personalities not just in the world of jazz but in worldwide popular music and entertainment. it is impossible to do justice to his extraordinary life in the space we have here, but suffice to say he enjoyed a performing and recording career that lasted well over half a century, and was undoubtedly one of the most important and influential figures in the whole history of jazz. His powerful and distinctive trumpet style combined with his trademark gravel-voiced singing made him a unique performer, and the ensembles that he led and participated in made some of the landmark recorings in New Orleans and Chicago jazz. Perhaps one of his most important contributions was to instigate the shift from pure collective improvisation in the New Orleans small-group jazz of the 1920s to a style that made space for individual solos within both small and large band line-ups. His work with King Oliver, Kid Ory and Earl Hines after he moved to Chicago in the '20s include some of the highest-regarded tracks of the era. Problems with his lips, the lips which gave him his nickname of Satchelmouth, abbreviated to Satchmo, encouraged him to develop his vocal style during the '30s, with tracks like "Lazy river", and his scat singing style was adopted by a host of other jazz performers. He continued working consistently through the hard times of the Depression, and by the '40s had a global reputation, and with the demise of the big bands in the post-war austerity of the '40s Armstrong disbanded the orchestra he had operated through the swing years and put together his famous All-Stars to re-create the New Orleans sound, playing with the likes of Earl Hines, Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young and Cozy Cole, and this proved a hugely successful formula. By the '60s, Armstrong had a wide musical profile, and successfully made records for the mass pop market, with hits like "Mack the Knife", "Hello Dolly", "Cabaret" and "What a wonderful world". He was one of the great personalities of popular music, and had long ago achieved "international treasure" status when he died of a heart attack in 1971 at the age of 70. Acrobat has on catalogue an album of his later recordings of standards - for details click here.

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