Louis Armstrong

His mother was about 16 and gave birth at home. His father was gone inside 18 months. He spent his first five years with his grandmother, then came back to a block off Rampart Street that people called the Battlefield. He hauled rags, bones and coal for the Karnoffskys, Lithuanian Jews who fed him and treated him like family, and Morris Karnoffsky advanced him the money for a pawn-shop cornet. He wore a Star of David the rest of his life. He left school at 11. On December 31, 1912 he fired his stepfather's pistol into the air, spent the night in juvenile court and was sent to the Colored Waif's Home, where a teacher named Peter Davis put him in the band and made him its leader.

He followed King Oliver to Chicago around 1922, built a reputation winning cutting contests, went to New York for Fletcher Henderson, and came back. Starting in November 1925 the Hot Five cut 24 sides in 12 months. Three years later, with Earl Hines, he recorded the "Weather Bird" duet and the trumpet introduction to "West End Blues" — young players around the country bought the discs and learned the solos by heart. He had moved the music off the collective and onto the soloist. In 1937 he became the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show. In 1964 "Hello, Dolly!" pushed the Beatles off the top of the chart and made him, at 62, the oldest artist to get there. He played more than 300 nights a year for 30 years.

The younger men found him embarrassing. Charlie Parker's generation heard vaudeville and a link to minstrelsy in the grin and the mugging, and said so, while he called bebop Chinese music and kept playing segregated rooms. Then in September 1957, talking to a journalism student named Larry Lubenow in Grand Forks, North Dakota, he said Eisenhower had no guts and was two-faced, called Governor Faubus worse, and cancelled a State Department tour of the Soviet Union: the way they were treating his people in the South, the government could go to hell. A Mississippi station pulled his records. Jackie Robinson and Lena Horne backed him. The FBI opened a file. His own road manager tried to soften it to reporters and nearly got fired for it.

He died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, at the house in Corona, Queens, and Sinatra, Ellington, Basie, Gillespie, Crosby and Johnny Carson carried him honorarily to Flushing Cemetery. Lucille left the house to Queens College, and it opened for tours on October 15, 2003, with a visitor center added across the street in 2023. What sits at the center of it is the trunk of reel-to-reel tapes he carried on the road and recorded at home, now digitized and searchable by anyone. The Hot Five and Hot Seven sides went into the National Recording Registry in 2002. "Melancholy Blues" is on the Voyager record, still leaving the solar system.

Louis Armstrong's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings album
  Twenty-four sides in 12 months from November 1925 — in the National Recording Registry since 2002 1925
• West End Blues song
  The unaccompanied opening cadenza that trumpet players still memorize 1928
• Weather Bird song
  A duet with Earl Hines and nothing else in the room 1928
• Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans book
  His account of the Battlefield, the Karnoffskys and the Waif's Home 1954
• Hello, Dolly! song
  Knocked the Beatles off number one and won him a Grammy 1964
• What a Wonderful World song
  Topped the British charts for a month when he was almost 67 1968

• December 31, 1912 aged 11 Arrested for firing a blank into the air on New Year's Eve Sentenced the next day to the Colored Waif's Home, where he learned the cornet.
• June 14, 1914 aged 12 Released into the custody of the father who had left him The arrangement collapsed and he went back to his mother.
• 1922 aged ~21 Follows King Oliver to Chicago to join the Creole Jazz Band
• November 1925 aged 24 The Hot Five begins recording for Okeh
• 1930 aged ~29 Serves nine days in jail after an arrest outside a club for marijuana He smoked it heavily for most of his life and said so.
• February 21, 1949 aged 47 First jazz musician on the cover of Time
• September 1957 aged 56 Denounces Eisenhower and Faubus over Little Rock and cancels a State Department tour The FBI kept a file on him for it.
• May 9, 1964 aged 62 "Hello, Dolly!" reaches number one At 62 he became the oldest artist ever to top the Hot 100.
• July 6, 1971 aged 69 Dies in his sleep at home in Corona, Queens

• Ella Fitzgerald 1917–1996
  Singer whose technical command and interpretations helped define jazz and the Great American Songbook. recorded with
• Bessie Smith 1892–1937
  Leading blues recording artist of the 1920s known as the Empress of the Blues. accompanied
• Duke Ellington 1899–1974
  Composer and bandleader who expanded the artistic ambition and vocabulary of jazz. contemporary and counterweight
• Miles Davis 1926–1991
  Trumpeter and bandleader who repeatedly redirected jazz through bebop, cool jazz, modal music, and fusion. criticized by
• Jackie Robinson 1919–1972
  First African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier. defended him after Little Rock
• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. sang with