Through its programs and concerts, the cultural complex has been making the music of Armstrong as familiar as his cherubic face that adorns a postage stamp. The story of jazz is the story of Armstrong. Pops' took the spirit and the feeling of jazz and brought it around the world, Marsalis said. Basically, he was a joyous person, yet he had a tender side and a sorrowful side, and all of these things came through in his compositions. Armstrong introduced the instrumental solo, which differed with the polyphonic style that was popular.
Jazz is played from the heart.
You can even live by it, he said in 1965. Armstrong was not born into expectations of greatness. His mother, May Ann, was only 15 and not married to Louis' father, William Armstrong. At the age of 5, Louis and a younger sister, Beatrice, moved to the home of his grandmother, Josephine, who had been a slave. The date and hour of his birth was a mystery because no family member kept a record.