News & Updates — Louis Armstrong

Happy birthday to the great Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, the amazing New Orleans jazz trumpeter who's 1920's bands stand among the most important groups in the history of American music. I know he always said he was born on the 4th of July, but we are giving him the birthday nod on his true date of birth, today. So smoke a reefer and listen to the sound bend around.

Happy birthday to one of the early influential jazz greats, Joe "King" Oliver! Old enough to claim Buddy Bolden as an influence, he became one of New Orleans' star cornet & trumpet players (he also had professional experience playing trombone). Despite having one working eye he learned to read and write music and was also a notable composer. He was mentor and a lifelong friend to Louie Armstrong, whom he taught and helped in New Orleans and later hired in Chicago. From about 1908 or so he was one of the best musicians in NOLA's Storyville district, destroying competitors in...

The Mother of the Blues, Gertrude Pridgett aka Ma Rainey, was an early singing star for that newfangled phonograph record player invention, as well as traveling and performing since the age of 12. She came from Georgia and heard the blues around 1902. She and her husband Will Rainey started groups called Alabama Fun Makers Company and then Assassinators of the Blues(!) and hit the road, also joining minstrel & medicine shows. She found herself in New Orleans in 1914 and started hanging with King Oliver, Louie Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. With her powerfully expressive vocals she cut her first...

One of the greatest singers of her time, Bessie Smith and her powerful voice was a major attraction of the 1920s and stood to influence many jazz & blues vocalists, most notably Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin. Bessie came from Chattanooga TN. She had lost both her parents by the age of 9 and her & her siblings busked in the streets for a living. At 18 she found work as a dancer in a traveling company that her brother worked for. Ma Rainey was also in the troupe and helped Bessie learn to handle a stage, as well as...