Famed for his spirited rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” larger-than-life jazz legend Louis Armstrong, nicknamed “Satchmo,” was full of flaws — too fond of things that cut his life short and impacted his married love.
But he had a heart bigger than New Orleans — and a soul imprinted with baptismal grace shortly after his birth 125 years ago, on August 4, 1901, when his grandmother Josephine, a practicing Catholic, took her cutie-pie baby grandson to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Mid-City New Orleans to be baptized a Catholic on August 25, 1901.
This legendary jazz musician who received countless awards — including the Grammy (Best Male Vocal Performance) for “Hello Dolly!” in 1965 — always believed, like George M. Cohan, that he was born on the Fourth of July, a year earlier, first of the new century. But the baptismal card signed by the Reverend J. M. Toohey put that to rest — even as Armstrong was blithely unaware of either his baptism, or actual birthdate.
Meanwhile, for the first five years of his life, he was carefully formed by his Catholic grandmother — with a touch of voodoo — helping him withstand the vicissitudes of living fatherless and impoverished in segregated New Orleans.
The fruits were clear as the Holy Spirit infused him with a special feel and talent that, before long, would beautifully infuse his musical output. In the words of one of his most famous songs, “What A Wonderful World” he created for himself and everyone else — warts and all. Though, regretfully, he never practiced his Catholic faith, simply noting he was raised Baptist, wore a Star of David, and was friends with the Pope!
Real life and determination
After those first five formative years with Grandmother Josephine, he rejoined his mother Mary Estelle “Mayann” Albert and sister, Beatrice “Mama Lucy” Armstrong, born in 1903 — his father William Armstrong having abandoned the family shortly after Lucy’s birth — enduring extremely rough conditions in their neighborhood, known as The Battlefield, on the southern section of Rampart Street. Soon he began attending the Fisk School for Boys, a segregated school, and working for a Jewish Lithuanian family, the Karnoffskys, who treated him royally — for instance, advancing him money so he could buy his first cornet and nurturing him with abundant and healthy food. He was forever indebted to them — moved to see how they, too, were subjected to discrimination by better-off whites, a memory forever seared in his soul as reflected in his 1969 memoir, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907, written as he was recovering from heart and kidney problems at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.
“I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.” He was grateful for the lessons he learned from them on “how to live — real life and determination.” They could see his musical talent after his first performance beside their junk wagon, selling the scraps they had collected, as Armstrong tried playing a tin horn to attract customers.
By age 11, he dropped out of school when his mother, now living with a common-law husband, moved the family to Perdido Street. Before long, he joined a street quartet of boys performing for money even as he learned to play by ear under the tutelage of various cornetists including Joe “King” Oliver.
Of this time in his youth Armstrong poignantly said, as reported by Laurence Bergreen in Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine — I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans … It has given me something to live for.”’
But his life took detour, when on January 2, 1913, as reported in The Times-Democrat, New Orleans, he borrowed his stepfather’s gun without permission and fired a blank into the air, landing him in New Orleans Juvenile Court on December 31, 1912, after his arrest — the next day sentenced to detention at the Colored Waif’s [sic] Home. It was a miserably spare and spartan place — no mattresses, bread and molasses meals, Captain Joseph Jones running it like a military camp complete with corporal punishment. In spite of it all, Armstrong grew as a cornetist, playing in the band, soon chosen as the band leader by his first teacher. And, before long, the almost teenage Armstrong had caught the eye of Kid Ory.
A year and a half later, in June 1914, Armstrong, now nearly 13, was released into the custody of his father. But it was not a happy time and before long he was back with his mother in The Battlefield — that seedy neighborhood full of all the old temptations.
Soon landing a job in a dance hall whose owner had organized crime connections, Armstrong managed to extricate himself from those bad influences, and pivoted to studying shipping management at the community college. But unable to afford the fees, he quit and began selling coal in Storyville, where he heard “spasm bands,” that played music with household objects, while listening to the early sounds of jazz played in brothels and dance halls, such as Peter Lala’s where King Oliver performed.
By the 1920s, he had arrived — recognized for his inventive trumpet and cornet playing -- soon shifting from collective improvisation to solo performance.
Musical icon
The year 1922 was a turning point. Following his mentor to Chicago to play in Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, he towered in the “cutting contests.” Bandleader Fletcher Anderson took note and before long, Armstrong was headed for New York City where his musical fame and influence as a band soloist and as a recording artist rocketed with such hits as “Heebie Jeebies” produced with his “Hot Five,” including Kid Ory (trombone). By the 1950s, he was internationally recognized as a musical icon, with regular radio and television broadcast and film appearances. But, more than his talent and success, he was much beloved — fans reveling in the other songs he was known for including “La Vie en rose,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” and “When You’re Smiling.” Then, too, there was his storied collaboration with Ella Fitzgerald.
Quite simply, given his distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was a magnetic singer and deft improviser, skilled at “scat singing” — with a reach extending to popular music, with cross-over appeal to white and international audiences — epitomized by all his film work including A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932), Cabin in the Sky (1943), High Society (1956), Paris Blues (1961), A Man Called Adam (1966), and Hello, Dolly! (1969).
And, though he rarely discussed race, he did let it be known he agreed with desegregation in the wake of the Little Rock Crisis.
Yet he largely transcended race. He was an everyman, whom everyone loved — the Holy Spirit having infused him with a special grace at the start of his life — until he breathed his last just shy of his 70th birthday on July 5, 1971, felled by a heart attack.
