Episode Details

Louis Armstrong was arrested at twelve for firing a gun on New Year's Eve and sent to the Colored Waif's Home in New Orleans, where he first picked up a cornet. From that reformatory, he launched a career that invented jazz soloing, transformed American popular music, and literally left Earth — his recording of "West End Blues" was included on the Voyager Golden Record, now traveling beyond our solar system.

This episode traces Armstrong from the poverty of Black Storyville through the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings that revolutionized music, his crossover into mainstream entertainment, and the criticism from younger Black musicians who called him an Uncle Tom.

• Armstrong's impoverished childhood in New Orleans and the reformatory where he found music
• The Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions that invented jazz improvisation as we know it
• His transformation from jazz revolutionary to America's most beloved entertainer
• The Uncle Tom accusations, the Little Rock confrontation with Eisenhower, and the Voyager record