On August 4, 1901, in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans nicknamed 'the Battlefield,' a baby was born who would one day be known around the world simply as Louis. His family had almost nothing. As a boy, Louis Armstrong sang on street corners for pennies and worked hauling coal. When he was eleven, he fired a borrowed pistol into the air on New Year's Eve and got sent to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys. That's where he picked up a cornet and discovered the thing he was put on Earth to do.
New Orleans in those days was sizzling with a brand-new sound called jazz. Louis soaked it up, played on Mississippi River steamboats, and by his twenties he was the most exciting trumpet player anyone had ever heard. He could hit higher, hold longer, and swing harder than any musician of his time. He also invented scat singing, the bouncy nonsense-syllable style, when his sheet music slipped during a recording and he made up sounds on the spot.
For the next 50 years, Satchmo, as fans called him, lit up stages from Harlem to Stockholm. He recorded 'What a Wonderful World,' 'Hello, Dolly!', and 'When the Saints Go Marching In.' He played for kings and queens and never forgot his New Orleans roots. Every trumpet solo in every jazz, rock, hip-hop, and pop song since carries a little piece of the kid from the Battlefield who picked up a horn and never put it down.
