If you are asked who Louis Armstrong is, you will probably answer without hesitation that this is a famous jazzman who had a unique voice. And you will be right. Do you know everything about this musician? Service https://ekmixmaster.com/ brings to your attention interesting facts from the artist’s life.
Born in a poor area of New Orleans, the boy was simply doomed to join the ranks of numerous criminals. 13-year-old Louis saluted on New Year’s Eve not with firecrackers, as many of his peers did, but with pistol fire. He accidentally found a weapon in his mother’s things (for which a woman who lived in a disadvantaged area needed a gun, one can only guess). For this, the teenager was placed in a shelter for colored homeless children, where he spent a year and a half.
And the fate of the boy would be very unenviable, if not for the music. Louis received his first
lessons in the colony. The head of the local orchestra, Peter Davis, noticed the talent of the young student and began to study with him. Having mastered the tambourine, and then the drums, the future star mastered the cornet, which later became his true friend. After the colony, King Oliver took up the young talent. A talented teacher and no less talented student – this couple immediately declared itself. They soon came to be called the “greatest trumpeters” of all time. By the way, Armstrong played so loudly in the orchestra that he had to be placed a few meters behind the rest of the musicians in order to somehow balance the sound of all the instruments.
And the way the musician played the trumpet was special, unique. As well as a unique voice and vocal improvisations. Scat – this technique, when words are replaced by onomatopoeia, was not invented by Louis. As a child, he heard it on the streets of his native city. And he just began to apply it in his work, they note on online mastering. As for the personal life of a jazzman, it was also very diverse and original, like his work. Four marriages – four wives, whose social status occupies a list from a woman of easy virtue to a true “Lady Armstrong”.
The musician met his first chosen one in a small bar, which had a very dubious reputation. Louis had a concert here. Seeing a local prostitute Daisy Parker, the 18-year-old fell for her. The girl was three years older, but this did not bother both, and they spent the next four years in marriage. It was a difficult period in the life of both spouses, and finally they broke up. Another unsuccessful union was the marriage with Lil Hardin, who played the piano in an ensemble with Louis. The second wife decided to make a career for her chosen one and tried to promote him in every possible way. However, such an active position of Lil tired the musician and he parted with her “without tears or regrets.”
The marriage with Alpha Smith collapsed when the dancer Lucille Wilson appeared in Armstrong’s life. It was she who was destined to become the real “Lady Armstrong”. She immensely respected her famous husband and supported him in every possible way, without trying to manage his career.It is curious that the jazzman, who practically did not rest and constantly performed, never considered music to be work. According to him, music was life itself, and he simply could not imagine himself without his trumpet and concerts. “Where I come from, musicians don’t retire. They just stop playing,” Louis once said. And he played until he died of cardiac arrest in 1971. Thus ended a whole era called Louis Armstrong.