The JAZZ Story

LITTLE LOUIS & THE KING

King Oliver moved to Chicago in 1918. As his replacement in the best

band in his hometown, he recommended an 18-year-old, Louis Armstrong.

Little Louis, as his elders called him, had been born on August 4, 1901, in

poverty that was extreme even for New Orleans' black population. His

earliest musical activity was singing in the streets for pennies with a boy's

quartet he had organized. Later he sold coal and worked on the levee.

Louis received his first musical instruction at reform school, where he

spent eighteen months for shooting off an old pistol loaded with blanks on

the street on New Year's Eve of 1913. He came out with enough musical

savvy to take jobs with various bands in town. The first established

musician to sense the youngster's great talent was King Oliver, who tutored

Louis and became his idol.

THE CREOLE JAZZ BAND

When Oliver sent for Louis to join him in Chicago, that city had become

the world's new Jazz center. Even though New York was where the

Original Dixieland Jass Band had scored its big success, followed by the

spawning of the first dance craze associated with the music, the New York

bands seemed to take on the vaudeville aspects of the ODJB's style

without grasping the real nature of the music. Theirs was an imitation

Dixieland (of which Ted Lewis was the first and most successful

practitioner), but there were few southern musicians in New York to lend

the music a New Orleans authenticity.

Chicago, on the other hand, was teeming with New Orleans musicmakers,

and the city's nightlife was booming in the wake of prohibition. By all