Armstrong was born on August 4th, 1900, into an impoverished family in New Orleans, and grew up in a rough neighborhood known as “the Battlefield.” His father abandoned the family when Armstrong was a young boy and his mother often had to resort to prostitution to keep the family afloat. It was during these formative years that young Satchmo was first introduced to the dance halls – filled with scandalous dancing, ladies of the night and jazz musicians.
He often found himself in trouble for general delinquency as a teenager. There is a particularly notable anecdote in which the young boy shot his stepfather’s .38-caliber pistol into the air on New Year’s Eve – a move that
landed him a stint in the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. It was there that Armstrong met the man who would change his life: Professor Peter Davis, who would teach Louis Armstrong how to play cornet and provide the basic musical instruction that would alter the course of American music for generations to come.