Louis Armstrong Influence

The United States of America has been one of many great countries to lead the world in technology, politics, and art. Music has existed in various forms such as rhythm and melody since the day human beings could hear and feel. Jazz is a genre of music that was born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This broad genre of music has roots that pull from pre-existing elements that are traced back to African-American slave culture. Some of those elements include single line melodies, call and response patterns, work songs and gospel influences. As time progressed, along with the spread of the knowledge of jazz, more artists throughout the country sought to cultivate the art and make it his or her own, while leading and soaring to new heights in the world of jazz. Commonly used instruments in a jazz band consist of the upright bass, drums, piano, saxophone, and the horns, usually a trumpet or trombone in modern days, or a cornet which was commonly used in the early 20th century. The most influential jazz artists of the …show more content…
Armstrong was born into a life of poverty; he was the son of slaves in New Orleans, Louisiana. Armstrong learned how to play the cornet while he was a child in school. Although he did not have the prodigious talent like Biederbecke, he constantly listened to jazz bands, with Joe “King” Oliver being his favorite. At the age of eleven, Armstrong dropped out of school to pursue his music career. Louis Armstrong did not have the resources that Biederbecke had; therefore Armstrong did what he could with what he had and joined a quartet all comprised of young men and performed on the streets for compensation. Since then, he found himself jamming with other artists, constantly refining his art with various famous jazz artists, and joined various bands with distinguished jazz players in the United