Louis Armstrong

He was married four times. His first marriage was to a former prostitute named Daisy Parker in 1918. The marriage was tumultuous from the very beginning and soon ended in a divorce. He had adopted a young boy called Clarence over the course of this marriage.

He married Lil Hardin in 1924. His second wife played a major role in shaping Armstrong’s career, but the two drifted apart in the late 1920s and divorced years later.

His third marriage was to Alpha Smith which lasted four years before ending.

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., to William Armstrong, a factory worker, and Mary Albert. His family was very poor. His father abandoned the family when Louis was young, and his mother often had to resort to prostitution to provide for the family.

He had to drop out of school in order to work and augment his mother’s meager income. He started singing in the streets for money and also began working for a Jewish family, the Karnofskys, who treated young Louis as a family member and encouraged his musical talents.

He fired his step-father’s gun in the air during a New Year’s Eve celebration in 1912 and was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys. There he received musical instruction and realized that he had a natural talent for playing the cornet. By the time he was released from the home in 1914, he had realized that his life’s calling was to make music.

Out of the home, he started taking music more seriously and began playing with a number of bands. He also learned about music from older musicians such as Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, and Joe "King" Oliver. By the late 1910s he had become a popular jazz music player in New Orleans.

In 1922, he moved to Chicago and joined his mentor Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Chicago was a thriving city at that time, and offered much scope for entertainers, especially musicians. Soon Armstrong became very famous and successful, and garnered a huge fan following.

Looking for better career prospects, he left Oliver in 1924 and joined Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra, the top African-American dance band in New York City at the time. Again he proved to be much successful and soon transformed Henderson’s band into what is today regarded as the first jazz big band.

The Great Depression set in during the late 1920s, and Armstrong’s hitherto thriving career suffered a setback. The depression caused several of the prominent clubs where he played to shut down. Many of his fellow musicians shifted to other professions to make a living.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1930 and played at the New Cotton Club. The club was often visited by the Hollywood crowd, and celebrities like Bing Crosby were regulars there. However, Armstrong did not stay there for long and returned to Chicago in late 1931.

His 1954 studio release ‘Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy’ is considered to be one of his masterpieces. Featuring timeless hits like ‘St. Louis Blues’, ‘Yellow Dog Blues’, ‘Loveless Love’, and ‘Aunt Hagar's Blues’, the album is described by Allmusic as "essential music for all serious jazz collections".

Armstrong’s 1967 single ‘What a Wonderful World’ was an iconic song that peaked at No.1 in Austria and U.K. and reached the top ten in several other countries like Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, and Norway.