It is safe to say that no musician has had a greater impact on American music from the 1920s on than Louis Armstrong. Be they instrumentalists or singers, every artist in fields ranging from jazz to blues to even rock and pop owe at least something to Armstrong's brilliance. His sound, phrasing, and ability to turn even the most trite of material into a transcendental masterpiece make him a truly legendary figure.

Like many legends, Armstrong's beginnings were highly unlikely. Having given himself the "all-American birthdate" of July 4, 1900, baptismal records showed that Armstrong was actually born to a teenage mother and vagrant father on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Brought up in abject poverty, Armstrong dropped out of grade school to work various jobs to support his family, including singing in a barbershop quartet on street corners for tips. These odd jobs led Armstrong to develop a relationship with a local family of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants, the Karnofskys, who took him in as a surrogate son and helped him raise the money to purchase his first cornet.

The extent of Armstrong's formal musical education came during his time at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, a boarding school for delinquent children that he spent time in and out of throughout his childhood. Upon being released from the Waifs' Home for good in 1914, he entered into a mentor-pupil relationship with the legendary cornetist Joseph "King" Oliver. Initially working as a musician on riverboats on the Mississippi River, Oliver would eventually convince Armstrong to move north to Chicago to join his Creole Jazz Band.

After being persuaded by his second wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, to break out from behind Oliver's shadow, Armstrong's career took its next major turn after he moved to New York in 1924 to join up with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. His playing would have a tremendous impact on not just the individual members of Henderson's organization (such as tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins), but the band as a whole, as chief arranger Don Redman found ways to incorporate Armstrong's style and overall feel into his charts.

Throughout the mid-to-late-1920s, Armstrong led a series of recordings that would eventually become known as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. These recordings featured several musicians from New Orleans via Chicago, and are considered by many to be the first truly great jazz recordings. Most importantly, they mark the first real examples of jazz's shift away from an ensemble-oriented sound to being more focused on individual soloists.

With his celebrity expanding rapidly, the 1930s saw Armstrong fronting his own big band for the first time. He began to appear in various other forms of media, including film and radio; his brief stint substituting for crooner Rudy Vallee's popular program made him the first African-American to host a national radio broadcast. It was also during this time period that his singing started to gain equal billing with his trumpet playing; partially out of Armstrong's lifelong love of singing, but also partially due to a series of lip injuries that would force him to take time away from the trumpet altogether.

The 1940s would see Armstrong disband his big band in favor of a return to a smaller, more New Orleans-style combo after a highly successful 1947 concert at New York's Town Hall. This combo, known as the All-Stars, would become Armstrong's favored touring unit for the rest of his life. His manager, Joe Glaser, continued to find ways to expand Armstrong's career in a more pop-oriented direction during this time as well. His collaborations with other singers, most notably Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby, would achieve a high level of popular success.

Although his popularity remained as high as ever, the affection showered on Armstrong by the jazz community would begin to wane in the 1950s. Due to changing cultural attitudes and the rise of the bebop movement, Armstrong's music would begin to be viewed by many as old-fashioned, even outdated. Worse, many young musicians viewed his enthusiastic and exuberant personality as being a throwback to the offensiveness of minstrelsy. Armstrong's more private actions would tell a different story, as he was actively and rather vocally involved in protesting the Little Rock Crisis of 1957 where Arkansas governor Orval Faubus refused to desegregate the public school system.

Armstrong's two final commercial successes would come in the 1960s. First, his 1964 release of the single "Hello, Dolly!" wound up unseating The Beatles from the top of the pop charts. This was a feat that was practically unimaginable for anybody at the time, let alone a 63-year-old jazz musician performing the title song of a Broadway musical. The second success would be 1968's "What A Wonderful World," which was initially somewhat ignored before experiencing a surprise resurgence after being featured in the 1987 film "Good Morning Vietnam."

The constant stresses of touring began to take a toll on Armstrong's health in his later years. Having suffered his first heart attack in 1959, he would be advised by his doctors to take breaks to recuperate on multiple occasions. Having none of that, Armstrong maintained a busy performing schedule, causing his heart condition to gradually worsen to the point where he was advised to stop playing the trumpet altogether. He would eventually suffer a heart attack and pass away in his sleep on July 6, 1971.

His influence on the world of music as a whole, be it jazz or pop, as an instrumentalist or vocalist, cannot be understated, as his artistry and groundbreaking style will continue to shine in a most joyous, singular manner for all time.