Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong: a founding father of jazz

Trumpeter Yoshio Toyama came all the way from Japan to perform at last weekend’s celebration of the birth of one of the founding fathers of jazz — Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. The 63-year-old Toyama was just 20 when he had a chance to meet and perform with Armstrong in Tokyo in 1964.

“I love Louis Armstrong,” said Toyama, a small man who belted out some of Satchmo’s biggest hits — including What a Wonderful World — at an outdoor birthday party on August 3 in Armstrong Park.

“I’m very proud to be here to play for him,” said Toyama, standing next to a large bronze statue of the jazz king who was born in New Orleans more than a century ago. The party, complete with a large cake and ice cream, kicked off a weekend of music billed as the Satchmo Summerfest.

On August 4, performers included the Storyville Stompers and the Louis Armstrong Society jazz band, featuring vocalist Charmaine Neville from one of New Orleans’ famed musical families. The Treme brass band held a children’s workshop, where kids brought their instruments on stage and performed with the band. Satchmo himself loved to perform for children on his porch in the working-class Corona neighbourhood in the New York City borough of Queens.

On Sunday, the Rebirth Brass Band was scheduled to perform, along with Trombone Shorty and his Orleans Avenue band and Kermit Ruffins and his Barbecue Swingers. Neville and others are holding a “Props for Pops” session that will include songs by and about Satchmo, whose many nicknames included “Pops”. “Louis Armstrong is such an ambassador for this city, even though he’s not here anymore,” said Chuck Morse, the assistant secretary of the Louisiana Office of Tourism.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Armstrong festival attracted as many as 50,000 attendees, but that number was cut in half to 25,000 last year — the first post-Hurricane Katrina Satchmo Summerfest, said Kathleen Alter, the festival’s director. The first Satchmo Summerfest was held in 2001 to honour what would have been Satchmo’s 100th birthday.

Satchmo lived his life believing that he was born on July 4, 1900, but church baptismal records indicated he was actually born a year later.

The legendary trumpeter/vocalist was born into a very poor family, abandoned by his parents, and spent part of his childhood in a segregated New Orleans orphanage where he learned to play the cornet, a trumpet-like instrument.

After moving from New Orleans to Chicago in the 1920s, the trumpeter made a series of recordings such as West End Blues with his Hot Five and Hot Seven combos that developed a new way of performing jazz as an instrumental soloist and singer.

By the time of his death in 1971, he had risen from his humble roots to become one of the world’s most popular entertainers.