58 Fun Facts About Louis Armstrong

In which city was Louis Armstrong born and raised?

New Orleans: he grew up in a neighbourhood so rough it was called the Battlefield, and the city later renamed its international airport after him.

What birthday did Armstrong himself often claim, though records suggest August 4, 1901?

July 4, 1900: he believed it all his life, but a church record found in the 1980s put his birth at August 4, 1901, so his museum now celebrates both days.

Which Jewish immigrant family employed the young Armstrong and helped him buy his first cornet?

The Karnoffskys: they fed him at their table and encouraged his singing, and some sixty years later he wrote a memoir about the family from a hospital bed.

What New Year's Eve stunt got the young Armstrong sent to the Colored Waif's Home?

Fired a gun into the air: the pistol was his stepfather's, and the home he was sent to gave him his first proper teacher, Peter Davis, who made him leader of its band.

Where did Fate Marable's band play when it taught the young Armstrong to read written arrangements?

Mississippi riverboats: it was the first band he had joined that played from written arrangements, so the teenager had to sharpen his reading fast to keep his seat.

Whose place did Armstrong take in Kid Ory's band when his mentor, nicknamed 'King', moved north?

Joe Oliver's: 'King' Oliver had taken the teenager under his wing, and a few years later he sent for Armstrong to play second cornet in his own band.

To which city did Armstrong move in 1922 to join his mentor's Creole Jazz Band?

Chicago: there he and the bandleader became the talk of the town with their two-cornet breaks, and within a year he was making his first records.

For which film series did Armstrong record 'We Have All the Time in the World' in 1969?

James Bond: the song from On Her Majesty's Secret Service flopped as a single, then reached No. 3 in Britain in 1994 after a Guinness advert revived it.

Why was Armstrong placed far behind the band at his first recording session in 1923?

He played too loudly: the band blew straight into a recording horn, and Armstrong recalled being so much stronger than the leader that he had to stand at the door.

Which Creole Jazz Band pianist became Armstrong's second wife in 1924?

Lil Hardin: she pushed him to quit his mentor's band and try to make it on his own, and his first records as a leader followed the next year.

Whose orchestra, New York's top African-American dance band, did Armstrong join in 1924?

Fletcher Henderson's: the year proved unsatisfying, so he left and began making records under his own name for the first time.

Armstrong played trumpet on 'Blue Yodel No. 9', a 1930 record by Jimmie Rodgers, an early star of which genre?

Country: forty years after that session, in the last year of his life, Armstrong re-created the record on television as a duet with Johnny Cash.

What was 'Muggles', the title of a 1920s Armstrong recording, slang for?

Marijuana: the slang apparently began in his home town, and Armstrong smoked it for most of his working life and was once arrested for possessing it.

Armstrong's Hot Five made jazz history while existing almost entirely in which setting?

The recording studio: a record label asked him to assemble the group, and as the Hot Five it appeared in public only at a couple of shows that label staged.

On which 1926 Hot Five recording did Armstrong famously scat, supposedly after dropping the sheet music?

'Heebie Jeebies': he said the lyric sheet slipped from his hands and the label boss waved him to keep going, and the record became a hit that put scat singing on the map.

With which pianist did Armstrong record the 1928 duet 'Weather Bird' and the landmark 'West End Blues'?

Earl 'Fatha' Hines: his 'trumpet style' meant melody lines struck hard enough to cut through a band, and generations of later pianists took it as their model.

Which two musicians were added to the Hot Five to make it the Hot Seven in 1927?

A drummer and a tuba player: acoustic recording horns coped badly with drums and bass, which is why the Hot Five had gone without them until Baby Dodds and Pete Briggs joined.

Which Fats Waller song did Armstrong perform in the 1929 Broadway revue Hot Chocolates?

'Ain't Misbehavin'': he had been hired for the orchestra pit, but his nightly feature went down so well that he was brought up on stage to perform it.

Which Hoagy Carmichael standard, first recorded as a 1927 instrumental, did Armstrong sing in 1931?

'Stardust': rather than sing the tune straight he paraphrased it like a trumpet solo, and records like this one helped make popular songs the repertoire of big-band jazz.

Which crooner, Armstrong's co-star in 1936's Pennies from Heaven, admired and copied his singing?

Bing Crosby: he used his clout as the film's star to insist that the studio hire Armstrong, though its boss had no wish to pay for him.

In which 1954 biopic, starring James Stewart as a bandleader, does Armstrong appear as himself?

The Glenn Miller Story: Armstrong and drummer Gene Krupa join its 'Basin Street Blues' jam, while Stewart's trombone was dubbed by professionals, one of them his own coach.

Armstrong's Secret Nine, a team he sponsored on a triumphant visit home in 1931, played which sport?

Baseball: during that hero's return he bought the local team new uniforms and threw out the first pitch himself.

Which mob-connected manager cleaned up Armstrong's legal and money mess from the mid-1930s?

Joe Glaser: within months he had Armstrong fronting a new big band and recording for Decca, and the two stayed together until Glaser's death 34 years later.

In 1937 Armstrong became the first African American to do what on network radio?

Host a sponsored national broadcast: he took over Rudy Vallee's yeast-sponsored variety show for the summer, and episodes survive among the tapes he kept at home.

In which New York borough did Armstrong settle for good in 1943 with his wife Lucille?

Queens: Lucille put a down payment on the modest house without telling him, and he liked the street so much that he never moved again; it is now his museum.

What was the small group that Armstrong led from 1947 for the rest of his career called?

The All-Stars: big bands had become too costly to tour, so he went back to the small-group jazz of his youth, and the sextet stayed his working band until he died.

At the 1950 session that produced his 'La Vie en rose', Armstrong also recorded which French song?

'C'est si bon': he had heard Suzy Delair sing it at a festival jam session in Nice two years earlier and, the story goes, promised to record it back home.

Which news magazine put Armstrong on its cover in 1949, as he prepared to reign as King of the Zulus?

Time: its reporter was with him when he heard he would be King of the Zulus, and printed his reaction, that he had dreamed of it all his life.

In 1960, the two sides in which country's civil conflict called a truce when Armstrong came to play?

The Congo: he was carried into the stadium on a chair, and ten years later he was still telling television audiences how he had stopped a war.

Which 1964 record ended the Beatles' 14-week hold on No. 1 and made the 62-year-old Armstrong a chart-topper?

'Hello, Dolly!': it was cut as a publisher's demo to plug a show that had not yet opened, and his label had no idea what it had until the orders snowed it under.

The only Grammy Armstrong won in his lifetime, for his 1964 chart-topper, honoured him as what?

A singer: the man best known for his trumpet won Best Male Vocal Performance, though the record itself lost the year's top prize to 'The Girl from Ipanema'.

What nickname did Armstrong's overseas tours of the 1950s earn him, soon used as an album title?

'Ambassador Satch': fans rioted for tickets on his 1955 European tour, Edward R. Murrow filmed it for television, and his record label put the nickname on an album.

Which Armstrong recording topped the British chart in 1968 while going almost unheard in America?

'What a Wonderful World': his label's boss so disliked the song that he refused to promote it, and it took the film Good Morning, Vietnam to make it an American hit twenty years later.

In 1968 Armstrong recorded a whole album of songs from which studio's films?

Disney: the album's notes announced that he would voice a jazz-playing cat in The Aristocats, but he never did, and the part went to Scatman Crothers.

How did Armstrong pronounce his own first name, according to home tapes at his museum?

He was registered as 'Lewie' in the 1920 census; friends called him 'Pops'.

Armstrong's last wife had performed at which nightclub?

Cotton Club: Lucille Wilson stayed his wife for 29 years, then spent her widowhood guarding his legacy and saw their house declared a national landmark.

Who was Clarence, whom Armstrong supported from his own teens until his death in 1971?

His adopted son: Clarence was a cousin's baby, and after a head injury in early childhood held the boy back, Armstrong provided for him for life.

What is 'Satchmo' short for?

Satchelmouth: he picked up the short form on his first trip to Britain in 1932, where a magazine editor is said to have garbled the old nickname as he greeted him.

Fellow musicians and close friends usually called Armstrong by which nickname, later the title of a Terry Teachout biography?

'Pops': it was his own catch-all greeting first, since, the story goes, he could never remember names, and friends simply turned it back on him.

Armstrong stunned the press by calling which president 'two-faced' with 'no guts' on civil rights?

Dwight D. Eisenhower: it was 1957, Little Rock's schools were in crisis, and Armstrong called off a government-backed tour of the Soviet Union, saying the government could go to hell.

Which Kurt Weill song gave Armstrong a hit with his 1955 recording?

'Mack the Knife': Weill's widow Lotte Lenya came to the session, and Armstrong slipped her name into the lyric alongside the song's other characters.

Which herbal laxative did Armstrong swear by and press on friends, fans and interviewers alike?

Swiss Kriss: he built it into a diet chart, 'Lose Weight the Satchmo Way', that his manager's office mailed out by the thousand, and he plugged it in one interview after another.

How did Armstrong often sign off his letters?

'Red beans and ricely yours': he signed off that way because the dish was his favourite food, and before he married his last wife he made sure she could cook it.

What injury forced Armstrong off stage in London in 1933?

A bleeding lip: it gave out in mid-show and ran red down his shirt front, the price of years of hard, high-note playing.

Armstrong's 'Melancholy Blues' is on the Golden Record carried by which pair of NASA space probes?

Voyager: the disc also holds Bach, Beethoven and Chuck Berry, and both craft have now carried Armstrong's trumpet out into interstellar space.

With which singer did Armstrong record three duet albums, including a Porgy and Bess, in the late 1950s?

Ella Fitzgerald: the first album set her clear voice against his gravel on eleven slow ballads, and it did so well that the label brought them back twice more.

Which singer and bandleader was tutored in scat by Armstrong and followed him into the revue Hot Chocolates?

Cab Calloway: he made the wordless style his trademark, building hits such as 'Minnie the Moocher' around scat choruses.

Which bandleader sat in on piano with Armstrong's group for two days in 1961 to record an album of his own songs?

Duke Ellington: rather than bring his famous orchestra, he simply took the piano chair in Armstrong's band, and together they cut seventeen of his songs.

Swing That Music, which Armstrong published in 1936, was the first of his two what?

Autobiographies: he wrote a second in 1954, and between shows he typed letters and reminiscences on whatever paper was to hand for the rest of his life.

Which blues singer did Armstrong accompany on a celebrated 1925 recording of 'St. Louis Blues'?

Bessie Smith: Armstrong answered her lines on cornet, and he kept the song for life, remaking it three decades later on his album of W. C. Handy's music.

In which 1956 musical, starring Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra, did Armstrong play the bandleader-narrator?

High Society: it remade The Philadelphia Story with the plot moved to the Newport Jazz Festival, which let Armstrong play himself and open the film as its singing narrator.

In Gene Kelly's 1969 film of a Jerry Herman musical, Armstrong sang the title song with which actress?

Barbra Streisand: the cameo was a nod to his own record, which had taken the song to No. 1 five years earlier, and it proved to be the last film he made.

The day before he died in July 1971, what did Armstrong phone to ask for?

A band rehearsal: after months of poor health he announced he was ready to go back to work, and he died in his sleep that night.

Armstrong played himself in a 1947 film opposite which singer, cast as a maid?

Billie Holiday: it was the only feature film she made, and she later wrote bitterly of the shoot and of how little of her survived the final cut.

How did Armstrong respond to his 1959 heart attack in Italy?

Kept touring: after a short convalescence he spent the rest of 1959 and half of 1960 on a near-endless string of one-nighters.

Which trombonist and singer duetted "Rockin' Chair" with Armstrong at his 1947 Town Hall concert?

Jack Teagarden: the night was such a hit that within months Armstrong had dropped his big band for a sextet, with the Texan trombonist signed up beside him.

Before he owned a cornet, the boy Armstrong drew customers to a junk wagon with what?

A tin horn: he recalled that the family he worked for could see he had music in his soul, and the job helped him buy his first real cornet.

In the 1959 film The Five Pennies, Armstrong duetted "When the Saints Go Marching In" with which comedian?

Danny Kaye: he plays the cornetist Red Nichols, and in the middle of the duet he breaks into an impression of Armstrong's voice with the man himself standing beside him.