The Rise of Satchmo

It might be the most celebrated arrest in American music history. Sometime in early 1913, a New Orleans street kid, who might have been as young as twelve, is picked up for firing a .38 pistol—he found it among his mother’s scant possessions—and hauled off to the hoosegow. The next day, appearing in juvenile court, he is sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. This was Louis Armstong, who tells the story in his magical autobiography, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. It is at the Colored Waif’s Home that he learns to play the cornet, opening up unimagined possibilities. It is part of the magic, of course, that he has no idea that any such thing will happen when the horsedrawn wagon full of other prisoners pulls up in front of the Waif’s Home entrance. Even so, this remarkable man-child seems poised for whatever awaits.