Customer Reviews

Satchmo My Life in New Orleans: My Life in New Orleans

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Love Loius Armstrong? How could you not? This is his childhood in New Orleans in Satchmo's own words. The reading is as colorful as his music, full of vitality and fun. Satchmo's take on life is clearly illustrated in this book. He greets life with a smile and takes troubles all with a smile. This book is an absolute joy to read. I can hear the music and feel the energy of those days in New Orleans by looking at the old photo on the cover. Young Louis Armstrong grew up dirt poor. But young Satchmo even as a young boy faced the world with a smile. His neighborhood nickname was, "Dipper" and at different times lived with his mother and her lovers (whom Louis called his, 'step-dads'), the Colored Waifs Home for Boys where he became the bugler and then leader of the band, and eventually, with his father. The passage where Louis describes how he became to play the cornet at the Colored Waifs Home for Boys is touching. I read as if I were sitting in a movie theater. Life in New Orleans was colorful and dangerous. Louis lived among the 'sportin' life -- pimps, prostitutes, honky-tonks, gambling, violence, and of course, music. Louis Satchmo Armstrong found his inspiration in this extraoridnary environment to become not only the most seminal figure in jazz in the twentieth century, but a most beloved man. Read this book slowly, you will want it to last.

I read my father's Signet paperback copy of this book when he wasn't looking. I was eight years old, in 1958, when he was stationed at Hahn AFB in W. Germany. Dad was a jazz lover, and he loved Louis! This book had a profound influence in my love of New Orleans and of jazz music. Although I haven't read it in 50 years, Satch's description of his early years in NOLA is as vivid today as the day I first read it. Highly recommend!!!

Written by Louis Armstrong himself. A treasure. New Orleans viewed through his eyes. I was lucky to get it because it's out of print.

I read this book in 1959 when I was in High School. I have been wanting to read it again, because I found it so interesting. What wonderful exciting times those were in New Orleans. It was very funny, what a wild man! I had a difficult time relating the young man in the book, to the later very famous "Ambassador". A book I'd like in my "library".