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Louis Armstrong is one of the most influential artists in jazz history. Let's learn more about this incredibly talented man!
He was a singer, soloist, bandleader, trumpeter, film star and comedian. He had instantly recognizable gravelly voice and demonstrated great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes.
Because of difficult childhood, Louis had to leave school after the fifth grade to earn living. Soon he formed a strong relationship with a Jewish family who employed him.
He was arrested at 11 years. He took his stepfather's gun and fired into the air on the occasion of a New Year's celebration. He was send to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. His mentor, Professor Peter Davis, saw his potential and taught him both music and strict disciplines.
Armstrong's cousin died in childbirth, and three-year-old Clarence was adopted by Louis. The child became mentally disabled at an early age, but Louis Armstrong took care of him his entire life.
He was the first African American jazz musician to write an autobiography. Though his autobiography vexed some biographers as Louis had a habit of telling tales and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.
In a three year period (between 1925 and 1928) Louis Armstrong recorded about 60 of the most influential records in history of jazz. They were totally unique and became the new form for jazz music.
In the late 1950s , during the Cold War, the U.S. State Department was sending jazz musicians and other artists on goodwill tours to improve American's image abroad. In 1960 Louis Armstrong became an official cultural diplomat. One of the most vivid signs of Armstrong's popularity was a one-day truce between the two sides of a secession crisis in the Congo’s Katanga Province so they could watch him play. He would later joke that he had stopped a civil war.
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