In 1964, "Hello Dolly" knocked the Beatles off their number 1 perch--the last record by a jazz musician to top the charts. Louis Armstrong's first hit was "Muskrat Ramble" in 1926. His legacy runs deep, among all musicians, yet many of his fans knew the profundity of his stature. [32] A consummate and successful world class entertainer who died rich, few knew him well. [26]

He was "despised" by critics--the author describes this as overbaked, jarring. [26] But in fact, for forty years he was beset by damning reviews-- he was a jazz artist who played pop tunes, fronted a swing band, appeared with media stars, engaged in vaudeville acts, made scatological jokes, and even Miles Davis, an admirer, got sick of that big Uncle Tom grin.

As a trumpeter, he was largely self-taught, and played against the rules. As a singer, his voice was grating and harsh. His skin was dark in a country where that was dehumanized. Yet, with character and talent, he won the hearts of the world and elevated everyone with ineffable radiance.

His friends were many, but everyone including a sequence of four wives and countless women, knew his trumpet came first. His upper lip had to be surgically rebuilt. [44] He always hit the gig on time. He played mostly with his eyes closed. He smoked pot daily and believed it had a medicinal effect.

He was born in 1901 in a squalid lane in New Orleans called Jane Alley. His mother was 15 years old just arrived from the cane fields of Boutte. His father abandoned them shortly after his birth. [48] {What kind of man would do this, and then the babe becomes Satchmo!} He had numerous "step-fathers", and while still a minor, began working in Storyville--the red-light district of New Orleans.

"Some say that Armstrong never had a childhood, others say that he never had anything else." [52]

Note - By age 7, began selling stone coal to the whore-houses with Morris, the son from a Russian Jew family. He ate with the family as he was growing up, they instilled in him "singing from the heart" [62], and they bought his first cornet [64]. For these gifts, "I will love the Jewish people all my life". [61]

As a confirmed juvenile delinquent, in 1913, Armstrong was arrested and remanded to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys. He was caught in possession of newspapers he was trying to sell and that was a "white's only" job.[66] Here, under a military discipline, he was able to play his cornet.

Louis began playing clubs and excursions on a river boat, the Steamer Sydney, which went up the Mississippi. The pianist/bandleader, Fate Marable, taught him to read music.[70]

Armstrong had a talent for coining new ways of describing the music--possibly "chops, jive, scat, gutbucket, mellow and solid" (as terms of approbation), and Pops, Face, and Daddy (as forms of address). [74]

The book provides details often backed up by long quotes from Armstrong's own biography, and many photographs documenting the arc of Armstrong's career.

Died of heart attack July 6, 1971.

The author dedicates the biography to the memory of Louis Armstrong and to his family and to "the family of jazz", particularly the "illegal" Prague Jazz Section -- "whose courage in the face of lunatic persecution reminds the world that Louis Armstrong's legacy is an art of unconditional freedom and that oppressors of every stripe will always fear it."

Louis Armstrong's autobiography "Satchmo" ends in Prohibition-era Chicago. For a look at Armstrong’s life and career from the mid-1920s on, a useful book is the biography "Satchmo" (1968) by jazz writer Gary Giddens. What makes this large-format book appealing is the collection of big photographs. These are unique materials that are now held by the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College. Giddens says, “Armstrong was the most influential, popular, and celebrated jazz musician who ever lived. No one disputes that. But he was also the most bitterly criticized.â€?

Typical of this ambivalence is from Miles Davies, a musician so tough, so honest that he makes th by-the-pool-loungin’ doods look like naughty tykes. Miles wrote in his Autobiography, “You can’t play nothing on trumpet that doesn't come from [Armstrong], not even modern shit. I can't ever remem-ber a time when he sounded bad playing trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.â€? However, Davis seethed about Armstrong's image: “But I didn't like the way he was portrayed in the media with him grinning all the time, and he said some things about modern music that didn’t sit too well with me; he put a lot of modern guys down. Back then I said, ‘Pops was a trailblazer, too, so he shouldn't be knocking it.’â€?

In the 1970s, plenty of people scolded Armstrong for his “Uncle Tom antics.â€? Giddens points out that critics did not mention the fact that in 1957 Armstrong pub-licly criticized President Eisenhower for not sending federal troops to Little Rock in order to protect black students who were trying to desegregate Central High School. During a performance in North Dakota, as likely to show blacks as much sympathy as it ever showed In-dians, Armstrong declared that “Eisenhower's got no guts,â€? and called Arkansas’ Governor Orval Eugene Fau-bus “an uneducated ploughboyâ€? (has-been Faubus fin-ished his political career by losing a race for governor to Bill Clinton in 1986). Armstrong canceled his State De-partment tour to Russia that year and had to endure cancellations of his shows by twitchy promoters.

In 1965, when local and state police attacked black and white protesters in Dr. King's march to Selma, AL Arm-strong said, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched. … Tell me, how is it possible that human be-ings treat each other in this way today? Hitler is dead a long time-or is he?"