Louis Armstrong
Born August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, LA
Died July 6, 1971, in New York City
“My whole life has been happiness,” Louis Armstrong liked to say, and he managed to make everyone who heard him feel that no matter how bad things got, everything was bound to turn out all right...
Sidney Bechet
Born May 14, 1897, in New Orleans, LA
Died May 14, 1959, in Paris, France
“There’s this mood about the music, a kind of need to be moving,” Sidney Bechet wrote. No jazz musician was more restless – or played more memorable music – than this master of the clarinet and soprano saxophone...
Buddy Bolden
Born September 6, 1877, in New Orleans, LA
Died November 4, 1931, in Jackson, LA
The growls and shouts that attended the birth of jazz came, by most accounts, from New Orleans cornet king Buddy Bolden. Though he was never recorded, he remains among the most revered of all jazz musicians...
Jelly Roll Morton
Born October 20, 1890, in New Orleans, LA
Died July 10, 1941, in Los Angeles, CA
“It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz,” Jelly Roll Morton once said, “and I, myself, happened to be [its] creator in the year 1902.”...
King Oliver
Born May 11, 1885, in or near New Orleans, LA
Died April 8 or 10, 1938, in Savannah, GA
Cornetist Joe “King” Oliver was a showman in the swaggering street-wise tradition of his mythic Crescent City predecessor, Buddy Bolden. But it was his craft that helped earn him his regal title...
