Blowing the trumpet of success
By Shantanu Mohan Puri

"Meeting Kings and Presidents, and all these things in Africa, I admit, I get a thrill out of it, because naturally I never expected all that; but I didn’t trumpet for all that either. I just want to blow the horn and please the people and come on home to my wife. Anything else that comes along, well, I can cope with it".

Louis Armstrong, January, 1962

ONE of the greatest jazz musicians of all times, Louis Daniel Armstrong was responsible for innovations that filtered down through popular music to rock-and-roll. His life was the embodiment of one who moved from rags to riches, from anonymity to becoming an internationally imitated innovator. He was the epitome of the Great American dream. He rose from the privation and squalour of Black America to become a fountainhead of a thoroughly original American sound. Yes, that was Pops, Sweet Papa Dip. Satchmo.

Born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901, Armstrong grew up in the back alleys of clubs which New Orleans was so known for. Before becoming an instrumentalist, Armstrong as a child was either dancing for pennies or singing for his supper with a strolling quartet of other kids who wandered around New Orleans freshening up the subtropical evening with some sweetly harmonised notes. Armstrong was a street boy and his street-begotten charms landed him in the Jones Home for coloured waifs, an institution set up for refining ruffians. It was here that young Louis first put his lips to the mouthpiece of a cornet. Till then his mother was calling him little Louie. To everyone else, soon after, he was Dippermouth or Satchelmouth.Satchelmouth was soon shortened to Satchmo and it stuck. Until the end of his life, stationery as well as his specially blended cologne was emblazoned with this shortened nickname.

The sound developed very quickly, and he was soon known around New Orleans as a formidable musicians. His early experiences of growing up in the South of Black America, toned his music. Out of the experiences of a child growing up to be a young man, everything from pomp to humour to erotic charisma to grief to the monumentally spiritual, worked its way into his tone. His improvised melodies and singing could be as lofty as a moonflight or a low-down as the blood drops of a street thug dying in a gutter. His deep gravel voice would warm up the faintest corner of one’s heart.

Armstrong realised early on that to become well-known he had to move out of New Orleans and travel to other towns across America. In 1920, he took a train to Chicago and joined his mentor Joe ‘King’ Oliver. Soon after a revolution took place in the world of Jazz music. King Oliver and his Creole Jazz band, featuring the dark, young musician, was a hit and all musicians, Black and White, wanted to know how it was done.

He moved from Chicago to New York, where his improvisation was the talk of the town. His combination of virtuosity, strength and passion was unprecedented. He soon made one record after another and unleashed all-time classics as Potato head Blues and I’m a ding dong daddy. Now a master of the trumpet and the coronet, Louis started to develop an earthy singing style that was to become known as his ‘gravel voice’. His musical and vocal reputation was soaring and his role in the 1929, revue named Hot Chocolates was a major success. By 1930, he was the most prominent Black musician in America.

Armstrong had by now appeared and established himself on the music scene in the USA. He bent and twisted popular songs with his horn and voice until they were shorn of sentimentality. He brought the revolutionary rhythm of swing to the world. He learnt how to dress and become a fashion plate. His slang was the lingua franca. His aura spread far and wide. Once, when asked by a news reporter how would he describe the music he played, Louis grinned wickedly and said, "Man when, you got to ask what is it, you’ll never get to know".

By the late ‘30s and early 40s, Armstrong had become a jazz player of world repute. His supremacy in the USA was unchallenged and his reputation as a pioneering soloist and a originator of scat singing had swept across London and Paris. He had, by 1930, starred in about half-a-dozen films, which catapulted his fame across the Atlantic to Europe. He was hailed as the most influential figure in the history of jazz and the man who most closely defined the genre’s sound. Just as the Beatles inspired numerous young star-gazers to pick up a guitar, it was the vigour and style of Louis Armstrong that caused hundreds of young aspiring musicians to try their hand at the trumpet.

In 1932, Armstrong went to Europe. Europe turned out to be as much of a hit as Chicago. Armstrong lived upto his reputation of a musical genius whose innovations in jazz were simply astounding. He was hailed across Europe as a jazz virtuoso. No one in western music — it was said, not even Bach — ever set that innovative pace on an instrument, then stood up to sing and converted the vocalists. His popularity rose not only because of his music but also because of his multi-faceted personality. His unflinching wit made him the talk of high society circles all across Europe. At London’s Palladium, George V did Armstrong the honour of attending in person. Louis repaid the compliment with a grinning blow to the royal box: "This one’s for you, Rex".

After World War II and through the early years of Cold War, Satchmo’s status as a jazz superstar gradually changed to that of an all-round show business entertainer. With racial segregation still rife in many parts of America, Louis Armstrong was one of the first Black performers to breach the colour bar. His success in the 1956 film High Society, co-starring along Grace Kelly, proved that he was as big a box-office attraction as the top White stars of the day. In the same year he demonstrated his influence on the new rock ‘n’ roll era-Fats Domino hit the charts with Blue Berry Hill", a song that Satchmo had recorded seven years earlier.

Armstrong made good use of his popularity and served as "Ambassador Satch, spreading good will for America around the globe. He took part in department-sponsored tours and broadcasts in the ‘60s. He was especially well received in the newly-independent nations of Africa. He participated in events such as a 1956 concert celebrating Ghana’s independence, attended by more than 100,000 Armstrong fans. Commemorative stamps of his visit sold like hot cakes and are now a collector’s envy.

Although he was no stranger to racial prejudice, Armstrong rarely made public statements. In 1957, however, he publicly condemned the violence that swept Little Rock over the issue of school integration and how it was handled. "Do you big me when I say, ‘I have a right to blow my top over injustice," he said. For this statement, Armstrong was called a firebrand in newspapers across the country.

By the 1950s Armstrong was an established international celebrity — an icon for musicians and lovers of jazz — and a genial, infectiously optimistic person to the friends and acquaintances.

In early 1964, the Beatles took the USA by storm, holding the no. 1 spot for 14 consecutive weeks with three different records. However Louis was able to topple them from the position. Hello Dolly, his superior remake of the title song from the Broadway musical, made him the oldest artist ever to reach the no. 1 spot on America single’s charts.

Armstrong continued to be a musical icon till his breath. Four years before his death, Armstrong recorded what a wonderful world. This number brought the flower-power love and peace message to the older generation. It found new commercial success in 1987, 16 years after his death. When it was used in the Robin Williams film, Good Morning Vietnam.

His death on July 6, 1971, was front-page news around the world. He was 71. More than 25,000 mourners filed past his coffin as he lay in state at the New York National Guard Armory. He had lived a full life and left a cultural legacy which was to become part of "America’s Jazz heritage" and one of the few things the Americans could call their own.

Armstrong summarised his philosophy in an introduction to his 1970 record, It’s a Wonderful World. "And all I’m saying is, see what a wonderful world it would be if only we could give it a change. Love, baby, love. That’s the secret. Yeah".