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AMERICAN MUSIC
American Music and a Black Man From New Orleans
No matter what popular music you love, the answer is Louis Armstrong
Satchmo
The most important popular musician in the history of American music is Louis Armstrong, a Black man from New Orleans. Tell that to Jann Wenner, the troubled and confused ex-publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine, who likely knows nothing of Armstrong’s gift to America as its most important popular musician.
Armstrong, named Louis Daniel Armstrong, was born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana. In a period of about 20 years, Armstrong changed American music forever and set in motion a revolution known as Jazz. The music Armstrong recorded and developed dominated popular music in America and would lead to other music revolutions in America, including swing, bebop, blues, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues.
Armstrong would not only become the international ambassador for the music, he would play it and sing it until he died in 1970. Jazz music today is America’s classical music, created here by African Americans in New Orleans and then nurtured by a cross-section of American musicians. And the popularity of jazz music back in the late 1910s is the root of popular music today.
