Music: Last Trumpet for the First Trumpeter

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Occasionally he wrote songs. One was called Get Off Katie's Head. Armstrong always claimed he sold it to a team of publishers for a promised $50—a small fortune in New Orleans during World War I. Unfortunately, the trusting composer neglected to sign a contract. Equipped with lyrics, the song became famous as I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate. "They never did pay me for it, never even put my name on it," said Armstrong. He was chastened by the experience, but he never became a really good businessman. He was more thorough about music. He listened to, and learned from, other jazz artists. "The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Larry Shields and his bunch —they were the first to record the music I played," he said. He even studied opera singers: "I had Caruso records, too, and Henry Burr, Galli-Curci, Luisa Tetrazzini, they were all my favorites. And that Irish tenor, John McCormack—beautiful phrasing."

In the early '20s, Armstrong worked on excursion boats up and down the Mississippi River. Then in 1922, Armstrong's idol. Trumpeter Joe Oliver, hired him for his Chicago band. Critics and audience both fell before Armstrong's horn like the walls of Jericho. His tone could be loud and lowdown. It could murmur suggestively or soar upward with an almost heraldic clarity. It had a physical strength that amazed his rivals: Armstrong threw out high Cs like a Met soprano. And there was always a teasing syncopation and a hint of heartbreak.

Recording companies signed him up, and Armstrong's best cuts came to be regarded as classics. "Ain't nobody played nothing like it since," he said in 1970. "And can't nobody play nothing like it now. My oldest record, can't nobody touch it. I didn't hit no bad notes on any of them." Legend says that Armstrong invented scat singing in 1926: while recording Heebie Jeebies, he dropped the sheet music and began ad-libbing nonsense syllables.

All in Fun. Armstrong safeguarded his lips with a preparation that he felt would help keep them firm. "What's the good of having music in your mind if you can't get it past your pucker?" he asked. The extent of his pucker provided him with his nickname, "Satchmo," a contraction of "Satchel Mouth."

He made nearly 2,000 recordings. Many were brilliant: When It's Sleepy Time Down South, Ain't Misbehavin', Muskrat Ramble, Basin Street Blues, and the inevitable and intoxicating When the Saints Go Marching In. Even in the '60s, when Satchmo and his kind of jazz might both have seemed oldfashioned, he took up the title song from Hello, Dolly!, touched it with his raspy vocal cords, and made his version a favorite all over the world.