Louis Armstrong

Biography

Louis Armstrong was born into a very poor family and received early musical instruction at the Waif’s Home for Boys. He soon began to play his cornet at parties, dances, funeral marches and local honky-tonks. This earned him a reputation as a fine blues player. In the early 1920s he moved to Chicago, and there his career took off. Over the subsequent decades he created a series of solos that introduced the concept of swing music and that became among the most influential recordings in jazz history. Among his great hits were Cornet Chop Suey, Potatoe Head Blues, Heebie Jeebies, West End Blues, I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Star Dust, Body and Soul, Blueberry Hill,That Lucky Old Sun, La Vie En Rose, A Kiss to Build a Dream On, I Get Ideas. Hello, Dolly, and What a Wonderful World. In 1972 he received (posthumously) a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences