Armstrong was born into a poor family in New Orleans on Aug. 4, 1901 (although for years he gave his birthdate as July 4, 1900), and was a street singer as a child. During his early teens, while in the New Orleans Colored Waifs' Home for Boys, he received his first instruction in music on the bugle and the cornet. After an apprenticeship as a trumpeter in New Orleans cabarets and on Mississippi riverboats, he was called to Chicago in 1922 to play second cornet in the orchestra of Joe "King" Oliver, a well-known New Orleans-trained musician. Later Armstrong was a featured soloist in the orchestras of Fletcher Henderson and Erskine Tate, and by the end of the 1920s, he had become leader of his own group -the Louis Armstrong Hot Five, later the Louis Armstrong Hot Seven. During these years he recorded a series of performances that influenced jazz musicians throughout the world.
In the following decades Armstrong led large bands (in the 1930s) and small ensembles (in the 1940s and beyond), recording prolifically. Beginning in 1932 with a triumphant appearance in England, he traveled often throughout the world as the foremost "goodwill ambassador" of American jazz music abroad. Armstrong died in New York City on July 6, 1971. He wrote two autobiographies, Swing That Music (1936 ; reprint, 1993) and Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954; reprint, 1988).
Although Armstrong led groups of uneven quality, his own playing and singing were marked by an unusual consistency of achievement. The basic elements in his playing were a persistent use of blues coloration, disciplined power and technical mastery, a burnished clarity of tone, and a rhythmic resiliency rooted in a strongly pulsating sense of swing. His vocal work exemplifies the instrumentalized phrasing and textural resourcefulness essential to excellent jazz singing.
Armstrong did not adopt the more complex rhythmic and harmonic elements of the "modern jazz" that began in the early 1940s. Instead, he continued to perfect the classic, easily assimilated melodic improvising that he had developed during his early years. An expert in the more introspective nuances of the blues, he was essentially a lyrical player. His performances fused warmth, humor, and sheer joy in the act of creation—an artistry filled with exultant and sweepingly personal eloquence.
