louis armstrong biography movie

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues

Follow the life and legacy of the master and so-called founding father of jazz, America's first pop star, and cultural ambassador. Follow the life and legacy of the master and so-called founding father of jazz, America's first pop star, and cultural ambassador. Follow the life and legacy of the master and so-called founding father of jazz, America's first pop star, and cultural ambassador.

• Sacha Jenkins
• Louis Armstrong
• Steve Allen
• Ernie Anderson
• 4 User reviews
• 25 Critic reviews
• 80 Metascore
• 13 nominations

Top cast 51

• (archive footage)

• (archive sound)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Connections Features Check and Double Check (1930)

User reviews 4

Really beautiful portrait of an artist.

• chelbelle77
• Dec 1, 2022
• How long is Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues? Powered by Alexa
• October 28, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• 路易斯阿姆斯壯：黑與藍
• Apple Original Films
• Imagine Documentaries
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Runtime 1 hour 46 minutes
• Black and White
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was an internationally famous jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and singer known for songs like “What a Wonderful World,” “Hello, Dolly!,” ”Star Dust,” and “La Vie En Rose.”

We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.

• Who Was Louis Armstrong?

Jazz musician Louis Armstrong, nicknamed “Satchmo” and “Ambassador Satch,” was an internationally famous jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and singer. An all-star virtuoso, the New Orleans native came to prominence in the 1920s and influenced countless musicians with both his daring trumpet style and unique vocals. He is credited with helping to usher in the era of jazz big bands. Armstrong recorded several songs throughout his career, including “Star Dust,” “La Vie En Rose,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World.” Ever the entertainer, Armstrong became the first Black American to star in a Hollywood movie with 1936’s Pennies from Heaven . The legendary musician died in 1971 at age 69 after years of contending with heart and kidney problems.

Quick Facts

When was louis armstrong born, musical beginnings, louis armstrong and his hot five, famous louis armstrong songs, "what a wonderful world", satchmo in movies and music career turbulence, louis armstrong and the all stars, alleged daughter sharon preston-folta, ambassador satch, support of the little rock nine, later career: “hello, dolly” and more international tours, when did louis armstrong die.

FULL NAME: Louis Daniel Armstrong BORN: August 4, 1901 DIED: July 6, 1971 BIRTHPLACE: New Orleans, Louisiana SPOUSES: Daisy Parker (c. 1918-1923), Lillian Hardin (1924-1938), Alpha Smith (1938-1942), and Lucille Wilson (1942-1971) CHILDREN: Clarence and Sharon ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

Louis Daniel Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901, in a New Orleans neighborhood so poor that it was nicknamed “The Battlefield.”

He had a difficult childhood. His father was a factory worker and abandoned the family soon after Louis’ birth. His mother, who often turned to prostitution, frequently left him with his maternal grandmother.

Armstrong was obligated to leave school in the fifth grade to begin working. A local Jewish family, the Karnofskys, gave young Armstrong a job collecting junk and delivering coal. They also encouraged him to sing and often invited him into their home for meals.

On New Year’s Eve in 1912, when Armstrong was 11 years old, he fired his stepfather’s gun in the air during a celebration and was arrested on the spot. He was then sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. It proved to be a pivotal time in his life. There, Armstrong received musical instruction on the cornet and fell in love with music. In 1914, the home released him, and he immediately began dreaming of a life making music.

While he still had to work odd jobs selling newspapers and hauling coal to the city’s famed red-light district, Armstrong began earning a reputation as a fine blues player. One of the greatest cornet players in town, Joe “King” Oliver, began acting as a mentor to young Armstrong, showing him pointers on the horn and occasionally using him as a sub.

In 1918, Armstrong replaced Oliver in Kid Ory’s band, then the most popular band in New Orleans. He was soon able to stop working manual labor jobs and began concentrating full-time on his cornet, playing parties, dances, funeral marches, and at local honky-tonks, a name for small bars that typically host musical acts.

Beginning in 1919, Armstrong spent his summers playing on riverboats with a band led by Fate Marable. It was on the riverboat that Armstrong honed his music reading skills and eventually had his first encounters with other jazz legends, including Bix Beiderbecke and Jack Teagarden.

Influencing the Creation of the First Jazz Big Band

Although Armstrong was content to remain in New Orleans, in the summer of 1922, he received a call from Oliver to come to Chicago and join his Creole Jazz Band on second cornet. Armstrong accepted, and he was soon taking Chicago by storm with both his remarkably fiery playing and the dazzling two-cornet breaks that he shared with Oliver. Armstrong made his first recordings with Oliver on April 5, 1923; that day, he earned his first recorded solo on “Chimes Blues.”

Lillian Hardin, the band’s female pianist whom Armstrong married in 1924, made it clear she felt Oliver was holding Armstrong back. She pushed her husband to cut ties with his mentor and join Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, the top African American dance band in New York City at the time.

Armstrong followed her advice, joining Henderson in the fall of 1924. He immediately made his presence felt with a series of solos that introduced the concept of swing music to the band. Armstrong had a great influence on Henderson and his arranger, Don Redman, both of whom began integrating Armstrong’s swinging vocabulary into their arrangements. The changes transformed Henderson’s band into what is generally regarded as the first jazz big band.

However, Armstrong’s southern background didn’t mesh well with the more urban, Northern mentality of Henderson’s other musicians, who sometimes gave Armstrong a hard time over his wardrobe and the way he talked. Henderson also forbade Armstrong from singing, fearing that his rough way of vocalizing would be too coarse for the sophisticated audiences at the Roseland Ballroom. Unhappy, Armstrong left Henderson in 1925 to return to Chicago, where he began playing with his wife’s band at the Dreamland Café.

While in New York, Armstrong cut dozens of records as a sideman, creating inspirational jazz with other greats, such as Sidney Bechet, and backing numerous blues singers, including Bessie Smith .

Back in Chicago, OKeh Records decided to let Armstrong make his first records with a band under his own name: Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five. From 1925 to 1928, Armstrong made more than 60 records with the Hot Five and, later, the Hot Seven.

Today, these are generally regarded as the most important and influential recordings in jazz history. On the records, Armstrong’s virtuoso brilliance helped transform jazz from an ensemble music to a soloist’s art. His stop-time solos on numbers like “Cornet Chop Suey” and “Potato Head Blues” changed jazz history by featuring daring rhythmic choices, swinging phrasing, and incredible high notes.

Armstrong also began singing on these recordings, popularizing wordless “scat singing” with his hugely popular vocal on 1926’s “Heebie Jeebies.” In 2002, all the tapes were preserved in the National Recording Registry.

The Hot Five and Hot Seven were strictly recording groups, however. Armstrong performed nightly during this period with Erskine Tate’s orchestra at the Vendome Theater, often playing music for silent movies. While performing with Tate in 1926, Armstrong finally switched from the cornet to the trumpet.

Armstrong’s popularity continued to grow in Chicago throughout the 1920s, as he began playing other venues, including the Sunset Café and the Savoy Ballroom. A young pianist from Pittsburgh named Earl Hines assimilated Armstrong’s ideas into his piano playing.

Together, Armstrong and Hines formed a potent team and made some of the greatest recordings in jazz history in 1928, including their virtuoso duet, “Weather Bird,” and “West End Blues.” The latter performance is one of Armstrong’s best known works, opening with a stunning cadenza that features equal helpings of opera and the blues. With its release, “West End Blues” proved to the world that the genre of fun, danceable jazz music was also capable of producing high art.

In the summer of 1929, Armstrong headed to New York, where he had a role in a Broadway production of Connie’s Hot Chocolates , featuring the music of Fats Waller and Andy Razaf. Armstrong was featured nightly on Ain’t Misbehavin’ , breaking up the crowds of (mostly white) theatergoers nightly.

That same year, he recorded with small New Orleans–influenced groups, including the Hot Seven, and began recording larger ensembles. Instead of doing strictly jazz numbers, OKeh Records began allowing Armstrong to record popular songs of the day, including “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Star Dust,” and “Body and Soul.”

Armstrong’s daring vocal transformations of these songs completely changed the concept of popular singing in American popular music, and had lasting effects on many singers who came after him, including Bing Crosby , Billie Holiday , Frank Sinatra , and Ella Fitzgerald .

Armstrong’s 1950 recording of “La Vie En Rose” remains one of his most recognizable vocals. It was notably featured on the soundtrack of the 2008 animated film WALL-E . Other popular songs of his included “Swing That Music,” “Jubilee,” “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” and the Grammy-winning “Hello, Dolly!,” his only No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (The chart began in August 1958, well into Armstrong’s career.)

Like his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, Armstrong’s 1938 song “When the Saints Go Marching In” and his jazz transformation of Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife” from 1956 were enshrined in the National Recording Registry.

Armstrong and Fitzgerald partnered on a collection of duets and made three albums in the second half of the 1950s. The songs include “Makin’ Whoopee,” “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” and “Cheek to Cheek,” originally written for the 1935 film Top Hat starring Fred Astaire . All their duets were released on a four-disc set in 2018 to celebrate Fitzgerald’s 100 th birthday.

One of Armstrong’s most beloved song is “What a Wonderful World,” which the musician recorded in 1967. Different from most of his recordings of the era, the ballad features no trumpet and places Armstrong’s gravelly voice in the middle of a bed of strings and angelic voices. Armstrong sang his heart out on the number, thinking of his home in New York City’s Queens as he did so.

“What a Wonderful World” received little promotion in the United States. The tune did, however, become a No. 1 hit around the world, including in England and South Africa. Eventually, it became an American classic after it was used in the 1986 Robin Williams film Good Morning, Vietnam .

By 1932, Armstrong was known as “Satchmo,” a shortened version of satchel mouth, on account of his large mouth. He had also had begun appearing in movies and made his first tour of England. While he was beloved by musicians, he was too wild for most critics, who gave him some of the most racist and harsh reviews of his career.

Satchmo didn’t let the criticism stop him, however, and he returned an even bigger star when he began a longer tour throughout Europe in 1933. In a strange turn of events, it was during this tour that Armstrong’s career fell apart.

Years of blowing high notes had taken a toll on Armstrong’s lips, and following a fight with his manager Johnny Collins—who already managed to get Armstrong into trouble with the Mafia —he was left stranded overseas by Collins. Armstrong decided to take some time off soon after the incident and spent much of 1934 relaxing in Europe and resting his lip.

Swing That Music

When Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1935, he had no band, no engagements, and no recording contract. His lips were still sore, and there were still remnants of his mob troubles. His wife Lillian was also suing Armstrong following the couple’s split.

He turned to Joe Glaser for help. Glaser had mob ties of his own, having been close with Al Capone . But he had loved Armstrong from the time he met him at the Sunset Café, which Glaser had owned and managed. Armstrong put his career in Glaser’s hands and asked him to make his troubles disappear. Glaser did just that. Within a few months, Armstrong had a new big band and was recording for Decca Records.

With his career back on track, Armstrong set a number of African American firsts. In 1936, he became the first Black jazz musician to write an autobiography: Swing That Music . That same year, he became the first African American to get featured billing in a major Hollywood movie with his turn in Pennies from Heaven , starring Bing Crosby . Armstrong continued to appear in major movies with the likes of Mae West , Martha Raye, and Dick Powell.

In 1937, Armstrong became the first Black entertainer to host a nationally sponsored radio show when he took over Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann’s Yeast Show for 12 weeks. He was a frequent presence on radio and often broke box-office records at the height of what is now known as the Swing Era.

By the mid-’40s, the Swing Era was winding down, and the era of big bands was almost over. Seeing the writing on the wall, Armstrong scaled down to a smaller six-piece combo, the All Stars, who he performed live with until the end of his career. Personnel frequently changed. Members of the group, at one time or another, included Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Sid Catlett, Barney Bigard, Trummy Young, Edmond Hall, Billy Kyle, and Tyree Glenn, among other jazz legends.

Armstrong continued recording for Decca in the late 1940s and early ’50s, creating a string of popular hits, including “Blueberry Hill,” “That Lucky Old Sun,” “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” and “I Get Ideas.”

Armstrong signed with Columbia Records in the mid-’50s and soon cut some of the finest albums of his career for producer George Avakian, including Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy and Satch Plays Fats .

Armstrong wed four times, the first during his teen years. In 1918, he married Daisy Parker, a sex worker. That commenced a stormy union marked by many arguments and acts of violence that ultimately ended in 1923.

During his first marriage, Armstrong adopted a 3-year-old boy named Clarence. The boy’s mother was Armstrong’s cousin who had died in childbirth. Clarence suffered a head injury at a young age and was mentally disabled for the rest of his life.

Armstrong’s second wife was a fellow musician. Shortly after joining the Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, he started dating the female pianist in the group, Lillian Hardin. They married in 1924 but separated seven years later.

During his marriage to Hardin, Armstrong began a relationship with a young dancer named Alpha Smith. In 1938, Armstrong finally divorced Hardin and married Smith, whom he had been dating for more than a decade. Their marriage was not a happy one, however, and they divorced in 1942.

That same year, Armstrong married for the fourth and final time. He wed Lucille Wilson, a Cotton Club dancer. They remained married until his death in 1971.

Armstrong’s four marriages never produced any biological children. Because he and his wife Lucille had actively tried for years to no avail, many believe him to be incapable of having children.

However, controversy regarding Armstrong’s fatherhood struck in 1954, when a girlfriend that the musician had dated on the side named Lucille “Sweets” Preston claimed she was pregnant with his child. Preston gave birth to a daughter, Sharon Preston, in 1955.

Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words: Selected Writings

Shortly thereafter, Armstrong bragged about the child to his manager Joe Glaser in a letter that was later published in the book Louis Armstrong In His Own Words (1999). Thereafter until his death in 1971, however, Armstrong never publicly addressed whether he was Sharon’s father.

Armstrong’s alleged daughter, who now goes by the name Sharon Preston-Folta, has publicized various letters between her and her father. The letters, dated as far back as 1968, prove that Armstrong had always believed Sharon to be his daughter and that he even paid for her education and home, among several other things, throughout his life. Perhaps most importantly, the letters also detail Armstrong’s fatherly love for Sharon.

In December 2012, Preston-Folta published the memoir Little Satchmo: Living in the Shadow of My Father , Louis Daniel Armstrong , about her relationship and connection with the famous musician.

A DNA test could officially prove whether a blood relationship does exist between Armstrong and Preston-Folta, but if one has been conducted, it hasn’t been publicly shared. However, believers and skeptics can at least agree on one thing: Sharon’s uncanny resemblance to the jazz legend.

When Armstrong’s popularity overseas skyrocketed, it led some to alter his longtime nickname “Satchmo” to “Ambassador Satch.” He performed all over the world in the 1950s and ’60s, including throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. Legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow followed Armstrong with a camera crew on some of his worldwide excursions, turning the resulting footage into a theatrical documentary, Satchmo the Great , released in 1957.

Although his popularity was hitting new highs in the 1950s, and despite breaking down so many barriers for his race, making him a hero in the Black community, Armstrong began to lose standing with two segments of his audience: modern jazz fans and young African Americans.

Bebop, a new form of jazz, had blossomed in the 1940s. Featuring young geniuses such as Dizzy Gillespie , Charlie Parker , and Miles Davis , the younger generation of musicians saw themselves as artists, not as entertainers. They saw Armstrong’s stage persona and music as old-fashioned and criticized him in the press. Armstrong fought back, but for many young jazz fans, he was regarded as an out-of-date performer with his best days behind him.

The Civil Rights Movement was growing stronger with each passing year, with more protests, marches, and speeches from Black Americans wanting equal rights. To many young jazz listeners at the time, Armstrong’s ever-smiling demeanor seemed like it was from a bygone era. The trumpeter’s refusal to comment on politics for many years only furthered perceptions that he was out of touch.

Armstrong’s previous silence on racial issues changed in 1957, when the musician saw the Little Rock Central High School integration crisis on television. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus sent in the National Guard to prevent the Little Rock Nine , a group of nine African American students, from entering the public school.

When Armstrong saw this, as well as white protesters hurling invective at the students, he blew his top to the press, telling a reporter that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had “no guts” for letting Faubus run the country. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,” Armstrong said.

His words made front-page news around the world. Although he had finally spoken out after years of remaining publicly silent, he received criticism at the time from both Black and white public figures. Not a single jazz musician who had previously criticized him took his side, but today, this is seen as one of the bravest, most definitive moments of Armstrong’s life.

Armstrong continued a grueling touring schedule into the late ’50s, and it caught up with him in 1959 when he had a heart attack while traveling in Spoleto, Italy. The musician didn’t let the incident stop him, however. After taking a few weeks off to recover, he was back on the road, performing 300 nights a year into the 1960s.

Armstrong was still a popular attraction around the world in 1963 but hadn’t made a record in two years. That December, he was called into the studio to record the title number for a Broadway show that hadn’t opened yet, Hello, Dolly!

The record “Hello, Dolly!” was released in 1964 and quickly climbed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, hitting the No. 1 slot in May 1964. The chart-topper even dethroned The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. It also earned Armstrong his only Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance.

This newfound popularity introduced Armstrong to a new, younger audience, and he continued making both successful records and concert appearances for the rest of the decade, even cracking the Iron Curtain with a tour of Communist countries such as East Berlin and Czechoslovakia in 1965.

By 1968, Armstrong’s grueling lifestyle had finally caught up with him. Heart and kidney problems forced him to stop performing in 1969. That same year, his longtime manager, Joe Glaser, died. Armstrong spent much of that year at home but managed to continue practicing the trumpet daily.

Armstrong restarted his public performances by the summer of 1970. After a successful engagement in Las Vegas, Armstrong began taking engagements around the world once more, including in London; Washington, D.C.; and New York City, where he performed for two weeks at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Two days after the Waldorf gig, Armstrong had a heart attack that sidelined him for two months. He returned home in May 1971, though he soon resumed playing again. He promised to perform in public once more, but it was a promise he couldn’t keep.

Armstrong he died in his sleep on July 6, 1971, at his home in the Queens borough of New York City. He was a month shy of his 70 th birthday.

Since his death, Armstrong’s stature has only continued to grow. His Queens home at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, New York was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977. He and his wife Lucille moved into the home in 1943 after she convinced him to purchase a house. Today, the building is home to the Louis Armstrong House Museum , which annually receives thousands of visitors from all over the world.

In the 1980s and ’90s, younger Black jazz musicians like Wynton Marsalis, Jon Faddis, and Nicholas Payton began speaking about Armstrong’s importance, both as a musician and a human being.

A series of biographies on Armstrong made his role as a civil rights pioneer abundantly clear and, subsequently, argued for an embrace of his entire career’s output, not just the revolutionary recordings from the 1920s.

Louis Armstrong Stadium, part of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center that annually hosts the U.S. Open in New York City, is named in his honor.

• The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
• If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.
• All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
• The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by.
• The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
• Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doing to it, and all I’m saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance. Love, baby—love. That’s the secret.
• We all do “do re mi,” but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
• Making money ain’t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die, you’re just as graveyard dead as he is.
• What we play is life.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.

Black History

Kamala Harris

Donald Glover

MLK Almost Didn’t Say “I Have a Dream”

Ray Charles

Whoopi Goldberg

Stevie Wonder

Sylvia Rivera

Jesse Owens

Opal Lee: The “Grandmother of Juneteenth”

13 Powerful Marsha P. Johnson Quotes

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Louis Armstrong’s Last Laugh

Private recordings, heard in the new documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues,” add a further dimension to the artist.

By Alan Scherstuhl

The tapes are thrilling, revelatory, wrenching: the warm-gravel voice of Louis Armstrong, perhaps the most famous voice of the 20th century, speaking harsh truths about American racism, about the dehumanizing hatred he and millions of others endured in a world he still, to the end, insisted was wonderful. He tells the stories — of a fan declaring “I don’t like Negroes” to his face; of a gofer on a film set treating him with disrespect no white star would face — with fresh outrage and can-you-believe-this? weariness.

He also tells them with his full humor and showmanship, his musicality clear in the rhythm of his swearing.

The public can hear these stories, privately recorded by Armstrong as part of his own lifelong project of self-documentation, in the Sacha Jenkins documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” (streaming on Apple TV+ ). Often, Armstrong recalls getting the last laugh on those who disrespected him — he harangues that gofer, and the studio, too, telling both where to stick their movie.

It’s no revelation that a Black man born less than 40 years after the abolition of slavery endured harrowing racism, or that stardom on par with Bing Crosby’s and Frank Sinatra’s offered him no exemption. Armstrong faced blowback in 1957 for speaking against discrimination, and donated to the Civil Rights movement. Usually, though, he avoided controversy.

By the 1960s, Armstrong’s reticence — as well as that wide-grinning, eye-rolling performance style that echoes minstrelsy — inspired backlash, most painfully among younger jazz musicians who revered his recordings of the 1920s, the very headwaters of jazz.

That backlash has been exhaustively hashed over ever since, with critics often dividing the Armstrong legacy in two. On the one hand: the young genius-artist-virtuoso, who perfected the arts of swing, scat singing, and improvisational solos, hitting trumpet notes so high they tickled God’s toes. On the other: the global entertainer with hits in six decades and a penchant for sentimental pop and discomfiting tunes like “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South.”

Well into this millennium, defenses of Armstrong’s later years have been, well, defensive. But Jenkins’s film, following the lead of Ricky Riccardi’s 2012 biography “What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years,” draws deeply on the Armstrong archives to make an assertive argument, often in Armstrong’s own words, that the man called Pops was deeply committed to the cause of racial justice.

“The Armstrong story has been in plain sight for so many years — and been so misunderstood for many years,” Jenkins said in a Zoom interview. “America’s going through something. In many ways, things haven’t changed, and in many ways things have gone backward.”

At the same time of the film’s release, the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens, is preparing for its 20th anniversary and the opening this spring of its new Louis Armstrong Center. The museum’s executive director, Regina Bain, said that the center will exponentially increase the museum’s educational outreach, a core mission with roots in Armstrong’s own development — he was given his first formal musical training as an adolescent at the Colored Waifs Home for Boys in New Orleans. The center also will host concerts, exhibit the Armstrong archives and showcase its Armstrong Now program, which puts artists in dialogue with Armstrong’s legacy.

Bain acknowledged that legacy’s complexity. “When you look at him,” she said by phone, “you should see what most people see: an icon and a musical genius with a gorgeous smile and an effusive personality full of joy. And you should also see the racial terror that he and the people around him went through, and affected his life and body, and that he was still able to move through.”

“It’s extremely important to tell your story in a way that doesn’t have any tainting or tampering,” said Jeremy Pelt, one of today’s top trumpeters, composers and bandleaders, in a phone interview. He’s published two books of interviews with Black jazz musicians (“Griot” volumes 1 and 2) for just this reason. “To be able to expose yourself, and deal with what you’ve gone through — it’s essential and freeing, even in the last chorus of your life.”

For 23 years, David Ostwald has led the Louis Armstrong Eternity Band , playing weekly gigs at Birdland. Ostwald has long championed Armstrong as a pioneer of civil rights, making the case in a 1991 New York Times guest essay that Armstrong, as early as 1929, actually did address race in his music. His example: “Black & Blue,” the song on which Jenkins’s film title riffs. On it, Armstrong sings, “I’m white inside, but that don’t help my case / ’cause I can’t hide what is in my face.”

Asked how he feels to see that argument going mainstream, Ostwald released a whoop. “Finally,” he said.

Ostwald credited Wynton Marsalis with having made Armstrong “OK again” in the jazz world. In the film, Marsalis describes growing up hating “with an unbelievable passion” the “Uncle Tomming” that Armstrong has often been accused of. But listening closely to Armstrong’s trumpet jolted Marsalis, the future artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, who has since championed Armstrong. In the documentary, he says that Armstrong “was trying to use his music to transform and reform and lead the country closer to his ideals.”

Armstrong’s musical legacy has likewise been contested. His solos, especially from the 1920s, have long been celebrated — in one of Pelt’s “Griot” interviews, the saxophonist J.D. Allen says that for jazz players, “all roads lead back to Pops.” But Ostwald recalled being regarded as “weird” for playing traditional and old-time jazz in New York in the 1970s and ’80s. “People were saying the music’s going to die, but I always felt that Armstrong was too powerful a force to ever go away, even if some people did misunderstand him.”

Today, young musicians feel increasingly free to find inspiration throughout Armstrong’s career. Like most Juilliard jazz graduates, the up-and-coming trombonist, composer and bandleader Kalia Vandever studied Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens recordings of the 1920s. But she also prizes his 1950s duets with Ella Fitzgerald: “I love the way that he transitions from singing into playing,” she said. “It’s seamless and sounds like one voice.” Listen to Vandever’s playing on her “Regrowth” album, and you may feel the connection, though the music sounds nothing like “Heebie Jeebies.”

With each fresh look at Armstrong’s life and influence, perhaps the old artist/entertainer distinction is fading. In a video introduction shown before the deeply moving tour at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, Bain offers, with welcome precision, a third way to think about Armstrong: as “one of the founding figures of jazz and America’s first Black popular music icon.” The message: He’s both. And both matter.

Find the Right Soundtrack for You

Trying to expand your musical horizons take a listen to something new..

Kim Deal  is ready to go solo. It just took four decades.

Hear the week’s 8 most notable new songs on the Playlist .

Jesse Ed Davis  was rock heroes’ secret weapon. And a mystery.

The man behind the legendary Donkey Kong Country  soundtracks.

Remembering Quincy Jones: Hear the Popcast .

We sent an email to [email protected]

Didn't you get the email?

By joining, you agree to the Terms and Policies and Privacy Policy and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

User 8 or more characters with a number and a lowercase letter. No spaces.

username@email

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• About Rotten Tomatoes®
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening This Week
• Top Box Office
• Coming Soon to Theaters
• Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most Popular Streaming Movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 90% Wicked Link to Wicked
• 72% Gladiator II Link to Gladiator II
• 81% Blitz Link to Blitz

New TV Tonight

• 73% Dune: Prophecy: Season 1
• 100% Outlander: Season 7
• 85% Interior Chinatown: Season 1
• 74% Landman: Season 1
• 100% Based On A True Story: Season 2
• -- The Sex Lives of College Girls: Season 3
• 94% A Man on the Inside: Season 1
• 22% Cruel Intentions: Season 1
• -- Our Oceans: Season 1
• -- Making Manson: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 100% Arcane: League of Legends: Season 2
• 92% Say Nothing: Season 1
• 95% The Penguin: Season 1
• 84% The Day of the Jackal: Season 1
• 76% Cross: Season 1
• 96% Silo: Season 2
• 86% Bad Sisters: Season 2
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV

Certified fresh pick

• 100% Arcane: League of Legends: Season 2 Link to Arcane: League of Legends: Season 2
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Paul Mescal Movies and Series Ranked by Tomatometer

The 100 Best Movies on Prime Video (November 2024)

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming.

Awards Tour

Joan Chen Talks Dìdi and Judge Dredd on The Awards Tour Podcast

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

• Trending on RT
• Gladiator II First Reviews
• Holiday Programming
• Verified Hot Movies

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues

Where to watch.

Watch Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues with a subscription on Apple TV+.

What to Know

A fitting tribute to a titan of American music, Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues honors its subject by letting him tell his story in his own words.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Sacha Jenkins

Louis Armstrong

Sara Bernstein

Justin Wilkes

Julie Anderson

More Like This

Related movie news.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

The gripping 'Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues' confronts the artist's complexities

A new film depicts the jazz pioneer's multifaceted black american experience.

Nate Chinen

Louis Armstrong was a titan who never forgot his humble upbringings, and also a public figure who carefully assessed his own weight in the world. Courtesy of Apple TV+ hide caption

Louis Armstrong was a titan who never forgot his humble upbringings, and also a public figure who carefully assessed his own weight in the world.

Louis Armstrong made his first transatlantic voyage in July of 1932, sailing from New York City to Plymouth, England, aboard the ocean liner RMS Majestic. This was a triumphant visit for Armstrong, whose bravura feats as a trumpeter and rugged ebullience as a singer had already made him a sensation on both sides of the pond. But while the British tour is one of many pivotal events in Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues , a revelatory new documentary out Friday on Apple TV+, its inclusion is most striking for the glimpse we get behind the curtain, where Satchmo allows his famous grin to constrict into a scowl.

His manager at the time was a potbellied white gangster named Johnny Collins, who wasted little on social niceties. The exploitative tilt of their working relationship was never a matter of public record — but the film, drawing extensively from Armstrong's private recordings, shares audio of Armstrong recalling a furious confrontation on the ship, with language that's jarring to hear in his iconic gravel-drawl. "I said, 'Listen, c*********. You might be my manager, and you might be the biggest s***, and book me in the biggest places in the world,' " he says. " 'But when I get out on that f***** stage with that horn and get in trouble, you can't save me.' " When Collins retorts by invoking the N-word, Armstrong fights the urge to break a wine bottle over his head, in order to kill him. "But the first thing I thought," he says, "[was] all them Black c********** in Harlem who'd say: I knew he would blow his top someday ."

There's so much straining beneath the surface of this moment: the stark indignity and mortal risk faced by even the elite African American entertainers of the day; the fraught prospect of a white protector, with all the attendant imbalances of power; the notion of a mask, and what it means to vent freely without one; the sporting interest of a community, or at least a constituency, taking their bets as the pressure builds.

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues is brilliantly steeped in these considerations — tracing them from the artist's rough childhood in New Orleans to his pop culture transcendence to his life as a neighborhood fixture in Corona, Queens, where his modest brick home is now the Louis Armstrong House Museum , which maintains a trove of scrapbooks, home recordings and other archival treasures that made this film possible. (Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections at the museum, is credited as a consulting producer.)

Sacha Jenkins, the film's director, hails from Queens himself. So does the narrator he enlists to portray Armstrong in voiceover, the rapper Nas . Hip-hop is the cultural frame through which Jenkins approached this project — he's the CCO of Mass Appeal and has made previous documentaries about Rick James and the Wu-Tang Clan — and that influence can be felt in the film's stylish visual flow as well as the frankness of its racial disquisition. Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues isn't the film to unpack what made Armstrong such an incandescent jazz pioneer, though it allows a few noted experts, like Wynton Marsalis , to rhapsodize about his music. What the documentary does instead, with focus and flair, is explore Armstrong's multifaceted experience as a Black American musician who came of age right along with the 20th century, enduring the worst and somehow embodying the best.

The academic field of jazz studies has long apprehended Armstrong as a richly layered subject, possessed of more agency and ambiguity than his popular reputation would suggest. More than any other film that addresses his legacy, this one manages a similar depth of field. "Pops, he faced a lot of challenges, and he always faced them with style and maintained his sanity and his joy and his embrace of life," attests Marsalis in the film. "And it was not a simpleminded happiness. It was a transcendent joy." So much of the archival material assembled by Jenkins and his team — notably the vibrant footage of Armstrong with his wife Lucille, in the harbor of their home or as far afield as Ghana (on a 1956 tour) — aligns with this characterization. But there's also a strong subtext of critique that the film addresses in earnest, by revisiting a common complaint that Satchmo's style reeked of "Uncle Tom" subservience.

It's a perspective birthed out of the civil rights movement and an ensuing era of Black pride, though the film demonstrates how engaged Armstrong was in the cause — often from a pragmatic position behind the scenes but sometimes in an utterly exposed position along its front lines. We get to witness the dissonance of a time when Armstrong is being sent across the world by the U.S. State Department, even as white supremacy is rearing its head back home. Time and again, we see his guarded composure in the company of white interviewers, set against the exasperation of candid moments among friends or in the solitude of his study.

Hardly any of the film's insightful commentators — old Armstrong associates like guitarist and banjoist Danny Barker, trusted advocates like journalist Dan Morgenstern and photographer Jack Bradley, Black cultural critics as ideologically distinct as Amiri Baraka and Stanley Crouch ­— ever appear on screen. That decision sharpens the focus on the archival photographs and scrapbook collages that Jenkins chooses to feature. It also heightens the power of the footage he does include, whether from concert films, home movies or clips from The Mike Douglas Show, The Danny Kaye Show and the 1980s PBS series With Ossie and Ruby.

In that last scrap of footage, actor Ossie Davis recalls his own youthful ridicule of Armstrong's onstage image — "sweat poppin', eyes buggin', mouth wide open, grinnin' oh my Lord from ear to ear" — and then describes the moment he came around. He'd been cast alongside Armstrong in the 1966 Sammy Davis Jr. vehicle A Man Called Adam, and spotted Pops in an unguarded moment on set, with a lonesome and faraway look on his face. "I never laughed at Louis after that," Ossie Davis says gravely. "For beneath that gravel voice and that shuffle — under all that mouth, with more teeth than a piano had keys — was a horn that could kill a man."

The admission lands with force, because of the way that Jenkins has set the stakes in the film. Armstrong was a titan who never forgot his humble upbringings, and also a public figure who carefully assessed his own weight in the world. He kept a history of slights and injustices in his back pocket, like anybody else. He strove toward a universal message with his music, while preserving the particularities that shaped his language. Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues isn't the only valuable resource for those looking to understand him and it certainly won't be the last. But it's a gripping and essential addition to the historical record, precisely because it creates a space for Armstrong that can only ever be as complex and unresolved as America itself.

• Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues

"Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues" reflects on the life and art of the legendary performer by delving into his records—not just all the ones he recorded on vinyl. Director Sacha Jenkins ("Everything's Gonna Be All White") was given access to the Armstrong estate's collected materials, which includes decades' worth of news clippings, reviews, and photographs; never-before-heard recordings of conversations that Armstrong made whenever friends and colleagues visited his modest home in Queens, New York; and most strikingly, scrapbooks of collages Armstrong made from his own materials. 

The latter seem to have provided Jenkins with the template for this movie. "Black & Blues" is essentially a filmmaker's cinematic scrapbook about Louis Armstrong . He helped found and evolve jazz and break through racist barriers that had previously stopped Black performers from attaining crossover success. But Armstrong was also dogged throughout his life by accusations that he was too measured and safe in his public persona during an American century in which many other prominent performers risked their careers by taking outspoken public stands on civil rights. Wynton Marsalis , one of many commentators, admits that as a young man he rejected Armstrong's music out-of-hand because he had a perception that he was guilty of "Uncle Tomism"—an opinion he retracted after studying his virtuoso technique and learning more about his life. 

Armstrong was caught in a bind. He was a dedicated supporter of civil rights in private. He donated money to causes and participated in fundraisers, and you hear him on the tapes and in late-in-life TV interviews talking about his experiences with racism. But for the most part, he either kept his opinions on those and other hot-button subjects to himself during press interviews or expressed them in a droll, read-between-the-lines sort of way. He avoided civil rights marches because, as he reasoned, getting his teeth knocked out by a cop would ultimately be a net loss for the same folks who counted on him for funding. The movie leaves it up to us to parse the complex moral calculus involved, while subtly reminding us that only an artist of prominence is ever placed in such a position. It's retroactive armchair-quarterbacking to confidently state what Armstrong should have done.

"Black & Blues" weaves in the expected film and video clips of Armstrong performing, being interviewed, and appearing at various public events and with icons from different walks of life. And there are plenty of examples of standard historical documentary techniques that seemed dazzlingly new once but have become commonplace (such as separating the people in photographs from their backgrounds to create the illusion of depth). 

But much of the film feels bracingly new and personal. It often seems to be assembling itself spontaneously before your eyes, by having cut-out words from magazines appear over photographs in sync with audio taken from Armstrong's private interview tapes and other sources. The resulting images often appear to have been mounted in scrapbooks. It's unclear if Armstrong's actual collages are being reproduced or if we're (sometimes) seeing directorial flourishes or inventions (as when Armstrong tells a story and we see figures representing the participants seem to come sort-of to life, like very early animated movies or flip books).

A major part of Armstrong's success came from his uncanny knack for seeming to find the rainbow in every cloud. (His last chart-topper, and one of his biggest successes, was "What a Wonderful World.") Think of him singing or speaking, and you picture him smiling or laughing. But those laughs and smiles were multilayered, sometimes calculated, and always imbued with secondary associations that eluded the general public but were crystal clear to Armstrong's family, partners, and close friends. 

The most revelatory and thrilling parts of the film are the sections where we get to hear Armstrong and his friends on tape, talking the way prominent artists and entertainers do when cameras aren't on them and nobody in the room is looking for a "gotcha" quote. Armstrong was a great storyteller no matter what venue he was in, but it's a special kick to hear him telling bawdy stories about his childhood in New Orleans and cutting loose with four- and twelve-letter profanities (which are as musical in his delivery as any phrase he blew on his horn). 

There's a wonderful quote from Marsalis here appreciating Armstrong's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner"—a song that's an emotional and intellectual minefield for Americans who were never truly welcome in their own country—and comparing it to Jimi Hendrix's version. Marsalis concludes that Armstrong simultaneously complicated and purified the song, transmitting complex feelings to the listener through pure technique. Reclaimed it, in a way. (Another anecdote finds James Baldwin hearing Armstrong perform the anthem, then saying that it was the first time he'd ever liked the song.)

The film takes a serpentine (and sometimes figure-eight) path through its subject's life and output, using its "collage" identity to go places you might not expect. But it also sometimes leaves specific topics or period in Armstrong's career sooner than the viewer might wish, and jumps around in time so matter-of-factly that sometimes it's hard to immediately discern where we are in his story. 

And yet those are all features of the film's style, not bugs. This is not a traditional "and then he went there, and then he did this" movie. It's biographical jazz that permits digressions and gives itself the freedom to jump around as it pleases. If "Black & Blues" returns to the same melody a few too many times, it doesn't diminish the overall achievement, which feels free in a way that these sorts of films rarely do.

On Apple TV+ tomorrow, October 28th.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues

• Louis Armstrong as Self (archive footage)
• Nas as Self
• Wynton Marsalis as Self
• Sacha Jenkins

Leave a comment

Now playing.

Night Is Not Eternal

All We Imagine as Light

Elton John: Never Too Late

The Creep Tapes

Small Things Like These

Bird (2024)

Latest articles

Black Harvest Film Festival 2024: Disco Afrika, It Was All a Dream, Dreams Like Paper Boats

Ted Danson Stars in Lovely, Moving “A Man on the Inside”

Appreciating the Brushstrokes: Pre-Computer Animation and the Human Touch

“Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” is Best Installment in the Franchise in Years

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues

• Accept Free Trial
• Add to Watchlist

How to Watch

7 days free, then $9.99/month.

Cast & Crew

Louis Armstrong

Wynton Marsalis

Sacha Jenkins

Sara Bernstein

• DOCUMENTARY

Definitive bio docu about beloved jazz trumpeter; language.

Information

Accessibility.

Copyright © 2024 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Internet Service Terms Apple TV & Privacy Cookie Policy Support

Today Apple unveiled the trailer for the new documentary film, “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues”

"Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues" offers an intimate and revealing look at the world-changing musician, presented through a lens of archival footage and never-before-heard home recordings and personal conversations. This definitive documentary, directed by Sacha Jenkins, honors Armstrong's legacy as a founding father of jazz, one of the first internationally known and beloved stars, and a cultural ambassador of the United States. The film shows how Armstrong’s own life spans the shift from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, and how he became a lightning rod figure in that turbulent era.

The documentary is directed and produced by Emmy-nominated Sacha Jenkins, and produced by Imagine Documentaries, Sara Bernstein, Justin Wilkes and Julie Anderson along with executive producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. The film is produced in association with Universal Music Group’s Polygram Entertainment with Michele Anthony and David Blackman serving as executive producers.

Apple TV+ offers premium, compelling drama and comedy series, feature films, groundbreaking documentaries, and kids and family entertainment, and is available to watch across all your favorite screens. After its launch on November 1, 2019, Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service in its debut. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have been honored with 279 wins and 1,164 awards nominations and counting, including this year’s Oscar Best Picture winner “CODA.”

About Apple TV+

Apple TV+ is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions, on over 1 billion screens, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro, Mac, popular smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL and others, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles, and at tv.apple.com , for $9.99 per month with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac or iPod touch can enjoy three months of Apple TV+ for free.*

For more information, visit  apple.com/tvpr  and see the full list of   supported devices .

Article Assets

“Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” will premiere in select theaters and globally on Apple TV+ on October 28, 2022

*Special offer is good for three months after the first activation of the eligible device. One offer per Family Sharing group. Plans automatically renew until cancelled. Other restrictions and terms apply; visit apple.com/promo for more information.

Press Contacts

• Jeni McGrath [email protected]
• Julia Benaroya Outside of the U.S. [email protected]

Apple TV+ Press