How Did Louis Armstrong Influence The Jazz Industry

Louis Armstrong is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential jazz musicians of all time. Coming into prominence in the 1920s, his fame stretched across decades through his unique style of trumpet playing, playing in bands of some of the more influential jazz musicians, being mentored by influential jazz musicians and becoming a nationwide cultural icon, not just in the view of the entertainment industry, but in the view of all of America (Megill, 76). His inventiveness, improvisation techniques, and his skill with the trumpet proved to be pivotal in the development of jazz. Louis Armstrong’s origins can best be characterized as humble, he was born on August 4, 1901, in a slum of New Orleans known as “the Battlefield”. Armstrong’s parents were severely poor, his father was a factory worker who abandoned him at age five and Armstrong’s mother frequently turned to prostitution to make money, leaving Armstrong to be raised by his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong (Bio.com, Younger Years), who despite all discouragements, kept …show more content…
The fact that he seldom commented on the growing Civil Rights Movement, leading to more young audiences and musicians to believe he was a product of an older world, going as far as to call him an “Uncle Tom” (Megill, 77). This was until he made his famous statement about the Little Rock crisis, in which the National Guard was called to let black students into high school, saying in 1957 that “The way they are treating my people in the South the government can go to hell”, subsequently rejecting an offer from the State Department to perform a tour (Megill,