hey called him “Pops.” They called him “Satchmo.”
From all walks of life and every tier of a fractured society, they
came to hear him play his trumpet, because the jazz music that he
played was so rich, so dynamic, and so utterly new. In the early
years of the twentieth century, it seemed to deliver to those who
listened a new sense of freedom, just as the modern systems and
cities were simultaneously imposing new kinds of constraints. He
would spend his life inventing a singular trumpet sound, which soared
and ripped and tore and swung and exploded from him in high-pitched
reels of exuberant, compassionate, and vivid celebration. He would
record some of the era’s most transcendent sides, from his
“Cornet Chop Suey” masterpiece to what many called a
life-changing recording of “West End Blues.” In Louis
Armstrong, the music seemed to emanate from a place of such singular
joy that it would rain down on people who came near, like sheets
of spray off a pounding August waterfall.
Red Stewart, a jazz contemporary of Armstrong’s and an unabashed
fan, described the effect his hero had on him, and on the city of
Chicago, when he first landed there in 1922: “I went mad with
the rest of the town. I tried to walk like him, talk like him, eat
like him, sleep like him. I even bought a pair of big policeman
shoes like he used to wear and stood outside his apartment waiting
for him to come out so I could look at him.”....
