My life has always been my music, it’s always come first, but the music anti worth nothing if you can’t lay n on the public. The mall thing is to live for that audience, ’cause what you’re there for is to please the people. ” When most of us here think of Jazz music, there Is a person that Is totally unlike any other. There have been many superstars In the past decades. One that had been found most significant was Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong was the most successful and talented jazz musician in American history. He was a great musician in so many ways.
He patented his own style of music that became known and loved all over the world. He was born on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Louis’ father, William, was a guy who loved “freedom,” so his father abandoned the family when Louis was born. Over the next five years Louis lived with his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong. Louis had a younger sister Borneo after William got back mad left again; at Just the age of six, Louis and three other boys form a vocal quartet and they would perform on the street corners for tips.
Louis’ smile traveled from tone side of his face clear over to the other. Everyone said It was as wide as an open satchel. So they called him “Cottonmouth” ( Weinstein 4 Louis began to raise his family hen he was a little boy, he started to look for Jobs at the age of seven wherever he could find them. For instance, he sold newspapers and vegetables and made a little doesn’t have any money, he would always find a careless drunk person stumbling in the streets who would drop his money. When he doesn’t have anything to eat, he would steal some food from the local grocery stores.
Then one day he didn’t find a job, but he found a dance club, he sneaked in the club and found out that there was a Jazz band, and at that club he watched the musicians secretly, to see how they held heir instruments, to study how they stood, Just to lay eyes on them. At that moment, a wonderful instrument caught his eyes, a horn; Just like a fairy tale, that’s how Louis’ story began. Armstrong influence and expansive career continues to make waves in Jazz world. Urbane stated ‘The Key to Armstrong success in the discipline he brought to bear ( Urbane 1 ).
Well, Louis was not always that lucky. Louis first fell in love with music at New Orleans. From childhood to his adulthood, Louis Armstrong changed greatly as a person and musician. He worked very hard and never gave up any opportunities in the way of becoming a musician. At seventeen, Louis accepted a Job with John Structures to perform along the Mississippi. It was a safe way to test greener pastures elsewhere, but with round trip ticket, because he could always come back to New Orleans ( Urbane 2 ).
It was safe way to test greener pastures elsewhere, but with round trip ticket, because the could always come back to New Orleans ( Urbane 2 ). Armstrong own musical education was anything but conventional. In September 1918, he had started playing on a Structures Steamers excursion boat that plied New Orleans harbor but, still restless, announced o friends and colleagues that he would be shipping out to perform along the Mississippi River from New Orleans as far north as Minneapolis. In 1922, Louts received a telegram from Joe King Oliver, asking him to Join his Creole Jazz Band.
This was a dream come true for Louis because Joe King Oliver played a really important role during his early life. Through Oliver, Louis met the woman who became his second wife, Ill Hardin, wood was a classically-trained Jazz pianist from Memphis, where he could make a sufficient income so that he no longer needed to supplement is music with day labor Jobs. Ill helped to promote Louis in Chicago clubs, billing him as ” the world’s greatest trumpet player. ” She and Louis formed a studio band, many of which featured Louse’s raspy singing.
On one of the most popular of the recordings, “Hobbies Jibes”, Louis spontaneously launched into scat-singing, in which the singer replaces the actual lyrics with nonsense syllables that often mimic the sounds made by instruments. Louis did not invent the singing style, but helped to make it enormously popular. During this time, Louis permanently switched from ornate to trumpet, preferring the brighter sound of the trumpet to the mellower cornet. The records gave Louis name recognition outside of Chicago.
The Great Depression had been a hard time for everyone in the country, however, Louis decided to start a new term in Los Angels. He found work in clubs and the band played mostly live gigs. He made his first film, Ex-Flame, appearing as himself in the movie in a small role. Louis gained more fans through this widespread exposures. He received a suspended sentence and returned to Chicago after an arrest for marijuana possession in November, 1930. Several years later, he reappeared in movies. Crosby 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven.
In 1937, Louis substituted for Rudy Valley on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, ” When the cats say, Well, when you going to retired? ‘I say Well, why should I retire? ” Sit up and look at the four walls, you know? Lots of people retired to die; so long as the horn anti hurting, and we’re getting along… ” New Orleans in the first 20 years of the 20th century was a musical melting pot of musical styles. African music was still prominent, like drumming and dancing, they ere some of the few freedoms allowed slaves to do before the civil war.
Ragtime was popular, and its up-tempo and syncopated rhythms had a profound influence on later Jazz music. As a musician Louis is a different one, he’s totally different than the others. Early in Louis’ career, he was taking what was called “Creole Jazz” or dance music, which was formally scripted, and combining it with trumpeter Buddy Boldness rougher, more improvisation-based street music, to create what would eventually become Jazz (Jones NP ). Before Louis Armstrong ever sang a duet with Ella Fitzgerald or Being Crosby.
Before “Hello Dolly’ or “It’s A Wonderful World,” there was just a lanky young man with a bright, beautiful horn. That young man transformed the trumpet into a solo instrument capable of astonishing range and lyrical beauty ( Cogwheels 14). What Louis does was he redefined the context in which the trumpet was played. His sense of rhythm and timing took Jazz from a staid, 2/4 beat to a more sophisticated 4/4 feel, paving the way for swing and for soloists to take center stage. Louis redefined the way of singing as well, he played the instrument and sang at the name time.
Louis always has lots of idea about music. All those music he introduced made him special. Beginning in the sass, Louse’s career permanently characterized by a whirlwind schedule of concerts, recording sessions, broadcasting and traveling. But regrettably, although his music was as superior as ever, his professional affairs were in terrible disarray, chiefly because of a series of inept and even corrupt, mob- connected managers ( Cogwheels 21 ). During his long career Louis played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; they were
Being Crosby, Duke Doling, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hilliness, the singing brakeman Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps the most famous Ella Fitzgerald ( Collier 27, 84, 86, 156, 157 ” Louis Armstrong is Jazz. He represents what the music is all about. ” Wanton Marshals Theses proved to be regeneration for Louis as both a musician and a public figure. Though he had been singing since his early days in Chicago, it was not until the sass that audiences recognized his remarkable skill as singer as well. His rough and throaty voice became, almost instantly, the internationally recognized voice of jazz itself.