ARMSTRONG, Louis

A precocious horn player from an indigent family, he was gigging in black bands around his native New Orleans as a teenager. By 1922 he went to Chicago to play in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, a prominent group, making his first recordings with them in 1923. Quick to exploit the possibilities of records for disseminating his music, initially to black audiences, eventually to a larger multicultural audience, he made countless recordings with innumerable assortments of other musicians. By 1925,...