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Armstrong first achieved fame as a trumpeter, but was also one of the most influential jazz singers, and towards the end of his career was best known as a vocalist.
Armstrong was born to a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana. His youth was spent in poverty in a rough neighborhood of uptown New Orleans. He first learned to play cornet (a trumpet-like instrument popular with New Orleans musicians) in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs where he had been sent after firing a pistol at a New Year's Eve celebration. He followed the city's frequent brass band1890 A brass band is a musical group consisting mostly of brass instruments, often with a percussion section. In some traditions other types of instruments like a clarinet or saxophones may be added, but other traditions do not accept woodwinds as part of parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk JohnsonWillie Gary "Bunk" Johnson 1879 or 1889 July 7, 1949) was a prominent early New Orleans jazz trumpet player in the early years of the 20th century who enjoyed a revived career in the 1940s. Bunk gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is specul, Buddy Petit, and above all "King" Joe Oliver, who acted as a mentor and almost a father figure to young Armstrong. Armstrong later played in the brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and first started traveling with the well regarded band of Fate MarableFate Marable ( 2 December, 1890 16 January, 1947) was a jazz pianist and bandleader. Marable was born in Paducah, Kentucky and learned piano from his mother. At the age of 17 began playing on the steam boats plying the Mississippi River. He soon became ba which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi RiverThis page is about the river in the United States; for other uses, see Mississippi River (disambiguation). The Mississippi River is the second-longest river in the United States; the longest is the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi. Taken t; he described his time with Marable as "going to the University" since it gave him a much wider experience working with written arrangementIn popular music an arrangement is a setting of a piece of music, which may have been composed by the arranger or by someone else. It may add details omitted by the composer, or it may replace those originally given and be merely based on the original wors. When Joe Oliver left town in 1919Events January January 1 Edsel Ford succeeds his father as head of the Ford Motor Company January 5 Spartacist uprising Socialist demonstrations in Berlin turn into attempted communist revolution with Spartacist League in the forefront January 9 Spartacus, Armstrong took Oliver's place in Kid Ory's band, regarded as the top hot jazz band in the city.
In 1922, Armstrong joined the exodus to Chicago, where he had been invited by Joe "King" Oliver to join his Creole Jazz Band. Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz band in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of jazz. Armstrong made his first recordings, playing second cornet in Oliver's band (including taking some solos and breaks), in 1923.
Armstrong was happy working with Oliver, but his wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, urged him to seek more prominent billing. He and Oliver parted amicably in 1924 and Armstrong moved on to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African American band of the day, at which point Armstrong switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. During this time, he also made many recordings on the side arranged by his old friend from New Orleans pianist Clarence Williams; these included small jazz band sides (some of the best pairing Armstrong with one of Armstrong's few rivals in fiery technique and ideas, Sidney Bechet) and a series of accompaniments for Blues singers.
He returned to Chicago in 1925 and began recording under his own name with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven with such hits as " Potato Head Blues", " Muggles" (a reference to marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness), and " West End Blues" which music set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come.
Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, then moved to Los Angeles in 1930, then toured Europe. After spending many years on the road, he settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, he continued to develop his playing.
During the subsequent thirty years, Armstrong played more than three hundred gigs a year. Most of his touring after the late 1940s was with a small stable group called the All Stars , which included Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Trummy Young , and Barrett Deems . During this period, he made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films.
Armstrong kept up his busy tour schedule until a few years before his death. While in his later years, he would sometimes play some of his numerous gigs by rote, but other times would enliven the most mundane gig with his vigorous playing, often to the astonishment of his band. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department with great success and become known as "Ambassador Satch".
Armstrong died of a heart attack in 1971 at age 69. He was interred in the Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, New York.