4 August: Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong, aka "Satchmo" was born on this date in 1901. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Although his birthdate was 4 August 1901, throughout his life he claimed he was born on 4 July 1900. It was only after he died that his true birthdate was discovered in baptismal records by the music historian Tad Jones. It's not known why Louis Armstrong gave himself a different birthday. One theory is that as a teenager, he lied about his age so he could join a military band.
2. His nickname, "Satchmo" is short for "Satchelmouth". This name may have originated when he was a young boy busking in the street, and he used to collect the coins people gave him in his mouth to stop other kids from stealing them, ie. using his mouth as a satchel. Another theory is that he was so named purely and simply because he had a big mouth. Another nickname he had was "Pops". Armstrong had a tendency to forget people's names and when he did, he'd call them "Pops".
3. As a youngster he was arrested for taking his stepfather's gun and shooting a blank into the air. He was sentenced to a stay in a home for orphaned black kids. The home was spartan and run like a military boot camp. However, it wasn't all bad for the young Louis because he had the chance to improve his Music and got to play in the orphanage band, and become the leader of it.
4. He used to work for a Lithuanian-Jewish family called the Karnofskys. They not only paid him for the chores he did for them, but made sure he ate a hot meal every day and invited him to their special Shabbat dinners. Their kindness extended to lending Louis five dollars to buy himself a horn. In appreciation for their kindness, he used to wear a Star of David pendant.
5. Armstrong was the first jazz singer to record scat music, which is nonsense syllables. While he didn't invent the technique, he became the first to record it when, during the recording of Heebie Jeebies, a 1926 song with his Hot Five band, he dropped the piece of paper with the lyrics on it, and rather than stop the recording, he used scat to fill the silence.
6. His best known record, however, is What a Wonderful World. This song was a big hit in Britain in 1968, but a total flop in America until it was used on the soundtrack of Good Morning, Vietnam in 1987. Originally, though, Armstrong wasn't the first choice of the writers of the song, Bob Thiele and George David Weiss, to record it. That was Tony Bennett - but he turned it down.
7. During one notable performance, he looked up at a member of the audience and yelled, “This one’s for you, Rex!” The spectator in question was King George V in a Royal Command Performance at Buckingham Palace in 1932.
8. Armstrong liked his food, and struggled with his weight, using laxatives to keep the pounds off. He smoked marijuana, and spent nine days in prison in 1930 for possessing the drug. His love of food, in particular his favourite dish, Rice and beans, was evident from his letters, which he'd sign “Red Beans and Ricely Yours.”
9. He married four times. His first wife was Daisy Parker, a local prostitute, who he first met when he was one of her clients. The smitten Armstrong found out her address so he could see her outside work and discovered that she was already living with a man. However, she left the man and they married in 1919. They separated in 1923 and the following year he married Lil Hardin Armstrong, a pianist. They separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong's third wife was Alpha Smith. Their marriage lasted four years - they divorced in 1942. Louis married Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club, in October 1942. She was his wife until his death in 1971. He didn't have any children with any of his wives, but during his first marriage, adopted the disabled child of his cousin Flora, who'd died in childbirth. The child's name was Clarence and Louis looked after him for the rest of his life.
10. Playing the trumpet took its toll on Armstrong's Lips. He preferred narrow mouthpieces that would stay in place easily, but they damaged his lower lip. In the 1930s, he got such severe mouth ulcers that he had to stop playing for a year. He was a big user of lip salves for this reason and the 1950s was an official spokesman for Ansatz-Creme Lip Salve.