Satchmo's Century - celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Louis Armstrong - Brief Article

American Visions, August, 2000 by Eugene Jr. Holley

Louis Daniel Armstrong--also known is "Pops," "Dippermouth," "Satchmo" and "Satch" (the last two derivatives of his childhood nickname, "Satchelmouth")--was so great that he had two birthdays! The trumpeter-vocalist was officially born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, but he recalculated his birthday as July 4, 1900. Armstrong died in 1971, but his legacy continues to enliven us: A host of publishers, arts organizations, radio programs, jazz festivals and record labels are celebrating his 100th birthday this year.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, in New York City, officially kicked off its two-year celebration, "100 Years of Louis Armstrong," on July 4, with several concerts, lectures and

films. National Public Radio will broadcast The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong, a documentary series consisting of 50 five-minute modules and 13 one-hour segments, this fall.

Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words (Oxford University Press, 1999) takes readers beyond Armstrong's music and into his head, revealing his natural knack for storytelling. His stories focus on his childhood, his reverence for other musicians, and his perspectives on race relations and the music industry.

Several new reissues also honor Armstrong's legacy. Satch plays cars Fats Columbia/ Legacy) is Armstrong's swinging tribute to pianist-composer Fats Waller. Ambassador Satch (Columbia/ Legacy) contains tracks from Armstrong's live dates in Europe. Satchmo the Great (Columbia/Legacy) is the soundtrack to the 1957 television documentary narrated by broadcasting great Edwin R. Murrow, which chronicles Armstrong's trips to Paris and Ghana. In Ghana, he played for 100,000 people, including the country's leader, Kwame Nkrumah.

Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (Columbia/Legacy, 2000), a four-CD, 89-track box set, contains the groundbreaking quintet, septet and big-band sessions recorded between 1925 and 1929, with pianists Earl "Fatha" Hines and Lillian Hardin (Armstrong's second wife), clarinetist-saxophonist Johnny Dodds and trombonist Kid Ory. Those sides feature "Potato Head Blues" and the Armstrong-Hines duet "Weather Bird." The jewel of the collection is "West End Blues," with Armstrong's stratospheric, pyramid-structured solo, which James Lincoln Collier describes in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz as having "a unity of form and feeling rare in jazz." These sessions heralded the birth of jazz singing with the 1927 song "Heebie Jeebies."

Armstrong was a superb interpreter of pop songs. With his raspy tenor vocals and down-home persona, he transformed pop tunes, such as Kurt Weill's "Mack the Knife" and Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust," into his own masterpieces.

Born poor in New Orleans to a mother who was a domestic worker and part-time prostitute and to an absentee father, Armstrong was raised by his paternal grandmother. He served two years in the Colored Waif's Home for truancy. He started playing the cornet there, and he was released when he was 14 years old. He played cornet in the city's honky-tonks, and by 1921 he was working with pianist Fate Marable on steamboats that sailed the Mississippi River.

His major break came in 1922, when the legendary cornetist Joe "King" Oliver took him to Chicago. "I had made the big time," Armstrong told Edward R. Murrow on Satchmo the Great. "I was with the greats. I was playing with my idol, the king, Joe Oliver. All of my boyhood dreams had come true at last." After his stint with Oliver, Armstrong switched to trumpet and led various combos and ensembles and collaborated with trombonist Jack Teagarden, bandleader Luis Russell, the Mills Brothers, Pearl Bailey and many others.

Armstrong was a man of multitudes: musician, film star, race man and husband (four times). His full-bodied, clarion tones created the sonic signature of the jazz solo. He influenced generations of trumpeters--from Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis--and improvisers on every instrument with the power of his rhythmic gravity.

He appeared in 24 motion pictures, including Pennies From Heaven, with Bing Crosby (1936); Cabin in the Sky, with Lena Home (1943); New Orleans, with Billie Holiday (1947); and Paris Blues, with Paul Newman, Sydney Poitier and Diahann Carroll (1961). He is perhaps best known for his rendition of "Hello Dolly," from the 1969 hit movie of the same name, which featured Armstrong and starred Barbra Streisand. As film historian Donald Bogle wrote in Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy. "His appearances [are] distinguished by superb musicianship and killer energy, which when fused with his unwavering commitment to his work and one-of-a-kind enthusiasm, endow him with an almost mythic power and resonance. Love him or hate, he is unfailingly mesmerizing."

Some blacks mistook Armstrong's public persona for "Uncle Tomming," but Armstrong, who had grown up interacting with blacks, whites, Creoles, Italians, Jews and Chinese, was a vocal race man. He criticized President Eisenhower's handling of the Little Rock school segregation battle of 1957. "Because of the way they are treating my people ... the government can go to hell," he barked. Speaking for his people while speaking to all people came naturally to Armstrong. As a goodwill ambassador for the State Department, he toured Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.