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In 1919 he left New Orleans for the first time to join Fate Marable's band in St. Louis. Marable lead a band that played on the Strekfus Mississsippi Riverboat Lines, and when the boats were in New Orleans, Armstrong also played gigs with Kid Ory's band. Louis stayed with Marable until 1921 when he returned to New orleans and played in Zutty Singleton's Trio. He also played in parades with the Allen Brass Band, and on the bandstand with Papa Celestin's Tuxedo Orchestra, and the Silver Leaf Band. When King Oliver left the city in 1919 to go to Chicago, Louis took his place in Kid Ory's band from time to time. Jazz trombone man Jack Teagarden remembering his 1921 New Orleans visit, said, He briefly worked with Ollie Powers' Harmony Syncopators before he moved to New York to play in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra for 13 months. In New York, he also did dozens of recording sessions with numerous Blues singers including Bessie Smith's 1925 classic recording of St. Louis Blues, and recorded with Clarence Williams and the Red Onion Jazz Babies. In 1925 Armstrong moved back to Chicago and joined his wife's band at the Dreamland, he also played in Erskine Tate's Vendome Orchestra, and then with Carrol Dickenson's Orchestra at the Sunset Cafe. Armstrong recorded his first Hot Five records that same year featuring Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, and his wife Lil on piano. This was the first time that Armstrong had made records under his own name. The records made by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and Hot Seven groups are considered to be absolute jazz classics and the peak of Armstrongs creative powers. These two bands, with a few changes in musicians, continued recording until 1928. Louis continued to play in Carrol Dickenson's Orchestra until 1929. He also lead his own band under the name of Louis Armstrong and his Stompers. For the next two years Armstrong played with Carroll Dickerson's Savoy Orchestra and with Clarence Jones' Orchestra in Chicago.
By 1929 Louis was becoming a very big star. He toured with the show "Connie's Hot Chocolates", a Broadway Musical written by 'Fats' Waller and Andy Razaf. Louis played in the pit orchestra but was also featured singing Ain't Misbehavin'. At this time he also appeared occasionally with the Luis Russell Orchestra, with Dave Peyton, and with Fletcher Henderson. Armstrong moved to Los Angles in 1930 and where he fronted a band called Louis Armstrong and his Sebastian New Cotton Club Orchestra. In 1931 he returned to Chicigo and assembled his own band for touring purposes.
In 1932 Louis traveled to England where he was a great success. For the next three years he was almost always on the road, criss-crossing the nation dozens of times and returning to Europe to play in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland, and England. In 1935 he returned to the States and hired Joe Glaser, who he had met while working at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago with Carrol Dickenson's Orchestra, to be his manager. Glaser took care of the business end of things, leaving Armstrong free to concentrate on his music. Glaser hired the Luis Russell Orchestra as Louis' backup band with Russell as the musical director. This was like going home for Armstrong, because Russell's Orchestra was made up of predominately New Orleans musicians, many of which had also played with King Oliver. The band was renamed Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra and was one of the most popular acts of the Swing Era. Glaser put the band to work and they toured constantly. During this period Armstrong became one of the most famous men in America.
The Louis Armstrong Orchestra continued to tour and release records, but as the 1940s drew to a close the public's taste in Jazz began to shift away from the commercial sounds of the Swing Era and Big Band Jazz. The so called Dixieland Jazz revivial was just beginning and Be Bop was also beginning to challenge the status quo in the Jazz world. The Louis Armstrong Orchestra was beginning to look tired and concert and record sales were declining. Critics complained that Armstrong was becoming too commercial.
In 1947 Glaser fired the orchestra and replaced them with a small group that became one of the greatest and most popular bands in Jazz history. The group was called Louis Armstrong and his All Stars and featured exceptional soloists like Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, Big Sid Callett, Vilma Middleton, and later Earl Hines. Though it has been stated by music historians and critics, that the recordings of the Hot Five and Hot Seven groups are Jazz classics and the peak of Armstrongs creative powers, the All Stars bands proved to the world, the genius of 'Satchmo' as an entertainer. The band went through a number of personel changes over the years but remained extremely popular worldwide. They toured extensively travelling to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America for the next twenty years until Louis failing health caused them to disband. Louis Armstrong became known as America's Ambassador of Jazz. In 1963 Armstrong scored a huge international hit with his version of "Hello Dolly". This number one single even knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts. In 1968 he recorded another number one hit with the touchly optimistic "What A Wonderful World". Armstrong's health began to fail him and was hospitalized several times over the remaining three years of his life, but he continued playing and recording. From;
Louis Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz musicians, and he continues to influence Jazz musicians to this day. He defined what it was to play Jazz, with his technical abilities, and, the joy and spontaneity of his amazingly quick musical mind. Like almost all early Jazz musicians, Louis Daniel Armstrong was from New Orleans. Born in 1901 to a very poor family, he was sent to reform school at an early age, after firing a gun in the air on New Years Eve. At the school he learned to play cornet under the very capable tutorship of "Captain" Peter Davis. After being released, he worked selling papers, unloading boats, and selling coal from a cart. Young Louis listened to bands at clubs like the Mahogany Hall, Come Clean Dance Hall, and Funky Butt Hall. Cornet player Joe "King" Oliver was his favorite, and the older man befriended him acting as a father to Louis and instructing him on the cornet. By 1917 he played in an Oliver inspired group at dive bars in New Orleans' Storyville section. Armstrong wrote in his autobiography, 'Satchmo', "There were all kinds of thrills for me in Storyville. On every corner I could hear music. And such good music...And that man Joe Oliver! My, my, that man kept me spellbound with that horn of his".
"In the small hours, a friend and I were wandering around the French quarter, when suddenly I heard a trumpet in the distance. I couldn't see anything but an excursion boat gliding through the mist back to port. Then the tune became more distinct. The boat was still far off. But in the bow I could see a Negro standing in the wind, holding a trumpet high and sending out the most brilliant notes I had ever heard. It was jazz. It was what I had been hoping to hear all through the night. I don't even know whether it was 'Tiger Rag' or 'Panama'. But it was Louis Armstrong descending from the sky like a god. the ship hugged the bank as if it were driven there by the powerful trumpet beats. I stayed absolutely still, just listening, until the boat dropped anchor".
In 1922 Louis received a telegram from his mentor Joe Oliver, asking him to join his Creole Jazz Band at Lincoln Gardens in Chicago. This was a dream come true for Armstrong. His amazing playing abilities in the band, soon made him a sensation among the other Chicago musicians. The New Orleans style of music took the town by storm and soon many other bands from down south made their way north to Chicago. While playing in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Armstrong met Lillian Hardin a piano player and arranger for the band. In February of 1924 they were married. Lil was a very intelligent and ambitious woman who felt that Louis was wasting himself playing in Oliver's band. By the end of 1924 she pressured Armstrong to reluctantly leave his mentors band.
"What we play is life, my whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn," he told a doctor a few months before he "left us, to teach some 'Hot Jazz Licks' to Gabriel in 1971". No, he wouldn't cancel an upcoming date at the Waldorf-Astoria. "The people are waiting for me, I got to do it, Doc, I got to do it."
My Life in New Orleans by Louis Armstrong, Da Capo Press, 1954
and
Swing That Music by Louis Armstrong, Da Capo Press, 1936
and
Louis Armstrong by Hughes Panassie Da Capo Press, 1971
and
Louis by Max Jones and John Clinton, Da Capo Press, 1971
and
Louis Armstrong : An Extravagant Life by Laurence Bergreen, Broadway Books, 1997
also
Louis Armstrong Tribute
My website of history, photos,
quotations, lyrics, and links, of Louis Armstrong