Louis Armstrong : jazz prophet

louis-armstrong

There is hardly any jazz musician who lived after Louis Armstrong’s comet blazed across the jazz landscape who was not influenced to a crucial degree.  It is easy to take for granted Armstrong’s contributions to the idea of jazz soloing they have become so fundamental to how we define jazz.  Just his way of phrasing, what we think of as swing, this was really just how Armstrong played, and when he played like this, no one else had played like that before.

Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4, 1900, a date that has been noted in many biographies. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date of August 4, 1901 was discovered by researcher Tad Jones through the examination of baptismal records. (The Official Site of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives)

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