Marsalis was part of a storied New Orleans family led by teacher and pianist Ellis Marsalis and at age 14 played traditional jazz with the New Orleans Philharmonic, becoming at age 17, the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. So I didn’t discover his real genius until I was 18.” His image was not something that was popular at that time. “I didn’t necessarily like his music, because I grew up in the Civil Rights era and the post-Civil Rights era and we felt like he was an Uncle Tom, always smiling with a handkerchief. “I grew up knowing who he was,” Wynton Marsalis says. 1 hit that knocked the Beatles out of the top spot for the first time in three months, and won the Grammy for song of the year.Īnd though Armstrong funded Civil Rights movement efforts and supported it, some activists saw him as being part of the old guard.
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“No one knew what swing was till Louis came along,” trumpeter Max Kaminsky said.Īrmstrong’s success continued through the century, until he became one of the first African-Americans to host his own national radio show, and was a frequent guest on TV and in musicals, one of which, Hello Dolly gave him a No. While still in his teens, he got into the band of his hero, Joe “King” Oliver, transplanting him to Chicago and then New York, where he had become a sensation in 1925, changing jazz from its syncopation to true sophistication. When he shot his stepfather’s pistol on New Year’s Eve on a dare, Armstrong, at 13, was arrested and sent to a reform school where he learned some horn skills from a teacher there. I played it all through the days,” he recalled in a memoir. He tooted a tin horn working on a junk wagon, before earning enough money to play his first horn. That’s why I try to make them right.”Īrmstrong was born in New Orleans August 4, 1901-not July 4, 1900, as he often boasted-in a poor part of the city, the grandson of slaves.
The world’s behind me, and I don’t feel no different about that horn now than I did when I was playing in New Orleans. Made by Henri Selmer of Paris, Armstrong's trumpet now in the collections of the National Museum of African American History, is among a few to be inscribed with his name.Īs Armstrong put it: “When I pick up that horn, that’s all. Writer Nat Hentoff has said: “I have never known a distinctive jazz music who was not dedicated to his instrument, but none made his horn the constant center of his being as intensely as Louis did.” “You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played,” Miles Davis said. “He is the beginning and end of music in America,” Bing Crosby once said.
One of dozens he played through his five decades of performing, it came to life when Armstrong played it. “Satchmo,” as he was known, was not only one of the most popular musicians of the 20th century, he also helped steer jazz to a new direction-one of inventive soloing, done with a heart that connected to millions.īlending popular song with the blues and an unerring assurance and tone, Armstrong is credited with helping shape the distinctly American art form. One of the standout musical artifacts to go on view at the National Museum of African American History and Culture when it opens this fall is the elegant 70-year-old brass trumpet from Louis Armstrong.
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