Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans in 1901 and found his way into the city's jazz scene early on. He played cornet and trumpet with a style that felt both exuberant and precise, and by the 1920s he was working with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. That period helped shape what would become swing music.

He recorded extensively over the decades, from the Hot Fives and Sevens sessions in the late 1920s to later collaborations like the 1956 album Ella and Louis with Ella Fitzgerald. His voice became as recognizable as his horn, gravelly, warm, and capable of turning a phrase like Let's Call The Whole Thing Off into something both playful and tender.

In 1967 he recorded What a Wonderful World, a song that eventually settled into the culture as a kind of quiet anthem. He kept performing and recording into his later years, leaving behind a catalog that includes everything from early jazz instrumentals to late-career vocal standards like Mack The Knife and La Vie En Rose.