“The theory that art can have no direct impact on politics has the advantage of staving off wishful thinking, but it takes a beating when you think of what [Louis] Armstrong did, or helped to do. Jazz would not have been the same without him, and the whole artistic history of the United States in the twentieth century, quite apart from the country’s political history leading up to the civil rights movement, would not have been the same without jazz. There was no easy conquest, and Armstrong himself was the object of prejudice right to the end. He had to be brave every night he went to work.”—Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (2007)Louis Armstrong, who died on this date in 1971, used his musical gift to transcend what crushed (and often has continued to crush) so many other African-Americans since the end of reconstruction—birth in the worst slum in turn-of-the-century New Orleans to a prostitute, childhood neglect, a stint in a juvenile home. Somehow, he overcame all that, expressing his irrepressible joy of life in his cornet and trumpet and, later, that equally distinctive voice.
In the 1950s, the musician became known as "Ambassador Satch" for his constant tours around the world. But all of this merely confirmed the fact that three decades earlier, he had been instrumental in creating one of America's few truly original art forms.
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