Last Trumpet for the First Trumpeter

GABRIEL himself might have envied his heaven-splitting, jubilant sound. His glossy face and keyboard-size grin were a national treasure—and a welcome sight in homes that would not dream of entertaining any other member of his race. He was a musical genius, a remarkable technician of the trumpet who went on to even wider fame as a singer. The fact that his voice sounded exactly like a wheelbarrow crunching its way up a gravel driveway made no difference at all. Legends don't need voices.

Louis Armstrong's death last week, two days after his 71st birthday, came as a tragic surprise. In March he had been so ill that it seemed unlikely he would recover. But he did, only recently announcing his return to work (TIME, July 12). His sudden death from heart failure ended a career that spanned the life of jazz. He emerged during its early days, became the first big star to shine in front of a combo. He paved the road over which virtually every jazzman of any importance would walk to fame thereafter.

When jazz began, America had little music to call its own. There were ballads, popular and folk songs, and some symphonic music by American-born but European-oriented composers. Bubbling in the New Orleans melting pot, however, was a disreputable mix of African, Spanish, French and Protestant revivalist musical influences that would mature into a uniquely American idiom. Black music had wandered away from its African grandparents, picked up a few hymn tunes, worked in fields and on railroads, and been sung to make slavery endurable. Around 1900, in the honky-tonks and whorehouses of New Orleans, it became jazz.

Armstrong was born near New Orleans' red-light district on July 4, 1900. Early on, his father decamped with another woman; Mother Armstrong was left on her own. "Whether my mother did any hustling, I cannot say," Armstrong once wrote. "If she did, she certainly kept it out of my sight."

At five he discovered music. The town's most famous honky-tonk dance place, Funky Butt Hall, used to send its band—including Cornettist Buddy Bolden, Trumpeters Bunk Johnson and Joe ("King") Oliver—out on the street to drum up business. Armstrong hung around to listen. By the time he was twelve, he was strolling through the Storyville red-light district singing tenor in a boys' quartet. Taunted one day by a neighborhood tough, he swiped a revolver and charged down Rampart Street, firing shots into the air. He was caught and shipped off to the Colored Waifs' Home for Boys, where he was entranced by the bugle calls and was set to banging the tambourine in the school band.

Admired Bad. The teacher soon moved him to drums, then to alto sax, bugle and cornet. After a year, Armstrong, 14, got out and organized his own little band, playing lead cornet. Mainly he worked the district. "One thing I always admired about those bad men in New Orleans," he recalled with a smile, "is that they all liked good music."