Jazz Articles about Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

by Tim Kirker
October 4, 2005

1901 - 1971When speaking of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby once commented that he was “the beginning and the end of music in America. Though Armstrong didn't single handedly create jazz, he did steer it through five decades of development, breathing structure and imagination into its fiber. In the process he helped change the American cultural landscape. Armstrong was an exceptional trumpeter and singer. His articulation and range on the trumpet were revolutionary and he ushered in soloing to ...

Tour of the Louis Armstrong House Museum

by Bob Jacobson
February 7, 2005

When Louis Armstrong came home from a road trip one day in 1943, he handed the cab driver the address of the new home his wife Lucille has picked out as a surprise, the first home he had ever owned. Since the house they pulled up to was in a racially-mixed neighborhood, Louis thought the cabbie was either lost or playing a trick on him. But then Lucille, who'd bought the modest two-story, clapboard-shingled house in working-class Corona for $3,500, ...

The Essential Louis Armstrong

by Colin Fleming
September 7, 2004

Louis Armstrong The Essential Louis Armstrong Columbia Legacy Recordings 2004

A potentially unwieldy concept, the compilation--woe the artist whose work spans decades and styles at the prospect of the two-disc catchall.

As with Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, and Miles Davis, we must number Louis Armstrong among those truly ill-served by the roundup approach to popular music, a musician whose stylistic innovations were spread across fewer idioms, perhaps, but whose career ...

Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Wife

by Jim Santella
April 1, 2004

Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Wife Laurence Bergreen Books On Tape ISBN 0-7366-4103-3

Velma Middleton sang with Louis Armstrong and his all-star band throughout the later years of his varied career. Her velvety-smooth voice lent itself to the trumpeter’s forlorn blues, as well as to his genuine show of love for singing to an audience. Together, they stoked a relationship that gave the world album upon album of happy music. They could swing, ...

Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life

by Jim Santella
March 27, 2004

Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life Laurence Bergreen 1997 ISBN 0-7366-4103-3

Laurence Bergreen paints both a comprehensive and factual summary of the life of Louis Armstrong. He backs up what he says with quotes. Armstrong was a writer. He kept copious notes. The artist bought his first typewriter in 1922 and wrote on it just about every night. Those personal recollections, coupled with those of musicians with whom Armstrong worked, make for a very substantial ...

Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life

by Joel Roberts
March 8, 2004

By Laurence Bergreen Broadway Books 1997, 0-553-06768-0

The history of jazz began with a gunshot. On New Year's Eve 1912, young Louis Armstrong, then singing for spare change with a street-corner quartet, “borrowed" a .38 revolver from one of the many “stepfathers" who regularly visited his mother. In keeping with a time-honored New Orleans tradition, he fired the gun in the air to welcome in the new year. A police detective standing nearby arrested Louis for ...

Jazz Nicknames

by AAJ Staff
March 4, 2004

Slang is definitely cool, but other non-musical aspects, like nicknames, have created a certain allure or attraction to jazz, too. Nicknames, especially the stories behind them, are fun, sometimes funny, and other times fascinating. The immortal Louis Armstrong had at least three of them. Even before jazz was officially a musical form, forerunners of it, such as Charles “Buddy" Bolden, had nicknames. In fact, it seems that the bigger the artist, the quicker he or she gained a ...