Louis Armstrong is frequently regarded by critics as the greatest jazz performer ever. With both his trumpet and his rich, gravelly voice, he made famous such jazz and pop classics as "West End Blues," "When It's Sleepy Time Down South," "Hello, Dolly," and "What a Wonderful World."
Chorus sings:
Go down Moses
way down in egypt land
tell all Pharaoes to
Let My People Go!
Armstrong:
When Israel was in Egypt land...
Let My People Go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand...
Let My People Go!
So the God seyeth: 'Go down, Moses
way down in Egypt land
tell all Pharaoes to
Let My People Go!'
So Moses went to Egypt land...
Let My People Go!
He made all Pharaoes understand...
Let My People Go!
Yes The Lord said 'Go down, Moses
way down in Egypt land
tell all Pharaoes to
Let My People Go!'
Thus spoke the Lord, bold Moses said:
-Let My People Go!
'If not I'll smite, your firstborn's dead'
-Let My People Go!
God-The Lord said 'Go down, Moses
way down in Egypt land
tell all Pharaoes to
Let My People Go!'
tell all Pharaoes
to
Let My People Go
Armstrong was born in one of the poorest sections of New Orleans on Aug. 4, 1901. "He was a prodigy," says art historian and curator Marc Miller, "a hard-working kid who helped support his mother and sister by working every type of job there was, including going out on street corners at night to sing for coins." At age 7, he bought his first real horn--a cornet. When Armstrong was 11 years old, juvenile court sent him to the Jones Home for Colored Waifs for firing a pistol on New Year's Eve. While there, he had his first formal music lessons and played in the home's brass band. After about 18 months he was released. From then on, he largely supported himself as a musician, playing with pick-up bands and in small clubs with his mentor Joe "King" Oliver.
The early 1920s saw Armstrong's popularity explode as he left New Orleans for Chicago to play with "King" Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, and then moved on to New York, where he influenced the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra with improvisation and a new musical vocabulary.
When he returned to Chicago in 1926, he was a headliner on records and radio, and in jazz clubs, wowing audiences with the utter fearlessness and freedom of his groundbreaking trumpet solos. It has been said that Armstrong used his horn like a singer's voice and used his voice like a musical instrument.
In 1929, he returned to New York, where he performed at Connie's Inn in Harlem and on Broadway in Connie's Hot Chocolates, and made his first nationwide hit recordings. Jazz was becoming a worldwide phenomenon and Armstrong was its leader, as was recorded in the November 1934 issue of Music: Le Magazine du Jazz (Brussels): "Armstrong arrives! Who is Armstrong? The true king of jazz. The only one who could convince those who doubt."
He was one of America's most significant artists by the late 1930s, and had created a sensation in Europe with live performances and records. His music had had a major effect on "swing" and the big band sound.
By the '50s, Armstrong was an established international celebrity--an icon to musicians and lovers of jazz--and a genial, infectiously optimistic presence wherever he appeared.
In 1963 Armstrong scored a huge international hit with his version of "Hello Dolly". This number one single even knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts. In 1968 he recorded another number one hit with the touchingly optimistic "What A Wonderful World".
Louis Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz musicians. Armstrong defined what it was to play Jazz. His amazing technical abilities, the joy and spontaneity, and amazingly quick, inventive musical mind still dominate Jazz to this day.
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