iSound

\"Satchmo\" was a defining figure in the American music form known as Jazz (as a solo trumpet player) and a somewhat greater influence with respect to his singing style. It is difficult to overestimate his importance in the history of popular Western entertainment. Born about 1900 (uncertain), he was the son of a New Orleans factory worker. Working for a junk dealer sometime after age 10, he taught himself to play a cornet that the dealer helped him buy (possibly a horn found in the store stock). He was sent to a \"reform school\" called the Colored Waifs Home at about age 12 for shooting a pistol on New Years\' Eve and joined the school band, beginning as bugler and winding up bandleader. Not long after his release in 1914, he met Joe \"King\" Oliver and played with him in the Kid Ory Band. Later catching up with Oliver in Chicago, Armstrong played on records made with the Oliver group in 1923. Two years later, OKeh records (the ethnic arm of...