Early+Life

He was born on July 4th, 1900. He died in 1971. It was not until the mid 1980's that his true birth date of Augest 4th, 1901 was discovered through the examination of baptismal records. He was born into a very poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana the grandson of slaves. He spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans know as "Back Of Town". His father William Armstrong abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and took up with another woman. His mothere Mary Albert left Louis and his younger sister Beatrice Armstrong Collins in the care of his grandmother Josephine Armstrong. At age 5 he moved back to his moms house to live with his mother and relatives, and he saw his father only in parades. He attended the Fisk School for boys. It was there that he likely had his first exposure to Creole music. He brought in some money as a paperboy and by finding discarded food and selling it to resturants. The money he made was not enough to keep his mother from prostituting. He hung out at the dance halls close to home where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille. For extra money he also hauled coal to storyville. Storyville was known as the red light district. He listened to bands playing in the Brothels and dance halls, especially Pete Lala's where Joe Oliver performed and other famous muscians would drop in to jam.



He dropped out of Fisk School at age 11 and joined a quartet of boys that sang in the streets for money. He also started to get into alot more trouble. Comet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Louis Armstrong to play by ear at Dago Tony's Tonk in New Orleans. in his laters years he gave the credit to Oliver. Armstrong hardly looked back at his youth as the worst of times but instead drew inspiration from it. He also worked for a Lithuanian Jewish immagrant family. They had a junk hauling buisness and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him as almost a family member, knowing he lived with out a dad they would feed and nuture gim. He later wwrote a memoir of his relationships with that family. It was titled Louis Armstrong + The Jeiwsh Family in New Orleans, LA, the Year of 1907