Louis Armstrong’s Childhood Nickname Was “Dippermouth”

Long before “Satchmo” came along, Armstrong was known in his childhood home in the Storyville district of New Orleans as “Dippermouth,” or “Dipper” for short. He supposedly got the moniker from his wide smile as a child, although the nickname later came to be associated with his embouchure (the way a player puts their mouth around an instrument).

Armstrong’s mentor, King Oliver — a fixture in the Storyville jazz scene during Armstrong’s youth — recorded a song in 1923 called “Dippermouth Blues,” which he co-wrote with Armstrong. Dipper himself would later go on to record his own version in 1936.

Armstrong Honed His Skills in a “Waif’s Home”

After firing off six blanks at a New Year’s Eve party in New Orleans in 1912, 11-year-old Armstrong was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, a facility that was part juvenile detention facility, part orphanage, and part reform school. It was his second stay at the home — according to recently uncovered records, Armstrong did a brief stint there when he was only nine, after he and five of his friends were arrested for being “dangerous and suspicious characters,” a charge used often at the time to detain people without cause.

By the time of his second stay, the Waif’s Home had hired a music teacher and started a band program. Under the tutelage of instructor Peter Davis, Armstrong learned the bugle and the coronet, and spent some time as the bandleader. Early on, he showed a skill for harmonizing and improvising that seemed beyond his years. It was far from his first exposure to the instruments, but it was the first time he received proper training. Armstrong started playing gigs after his release from the home in 1914.

Armstrong Didn’t Start Out as a Trumpet Player

While he is remembered today for his distinctive voice and rich trumpet solos, the trumpet wasn’t Armstrong’s original instrument of choice — even years into his career. Satchmo rose to prominence in his mid-teens playing the cornet, which is similar to a trumpet but smaller and with a few subtle differences.

For example, a trumpet is a cylindrical brass instrument, meaning the tube stays the same diameter throughout, but a cornet’s tube tapers off on its way to the mouthpiece, giving it a mellower tone. From the 1800s to the mid-1900s, the cornet was a standard part of a brass or jazz ensemble, as well as a popular solo instrument. While trumpets were also played, they weren’t typically solo instruments.

Armstrong, however, has been credited with reinventing the trumpet in the public consciousness. In the mid-1920s, as Armstrong tells it, the bandleader of an orchestra he played with said he “looked funny… with that stubby cornet.” The band’s other brass player played the trumpet, and Armstrong thought the sound of two trumpets sounded better. He started playing the trumpet as he would the cornet, with extensive improvisation and crowd-pleasing solos. He wasn’t the only jazz musician doing this, but as he rose to national prominence, his inventive style helped change public opinion about what a trumpet could sound like.

He Used to Play in a Silent Movie Orchestra

In the mid-1920s, Armstrong played with Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra — the same band that inspired him to pick up a trumpet. The Big Band ensemble was one of the early players on Chicago’s jazz scene and performed at the Vendome Theatre in Chicago, providing accompaniment and intermission entertainment for silent films. Armstrong not only played jazz solos, but also performed operatic arias.

Lip Injuries Were a Common Ailment for Armstrong

There was one bad habit Armstrong picked up at the Waif’s Home: a poor embouchure that proved unsafe for his face. Bad form is especially dangerous with brass instruments, including cornets and trumpets, because shifting one’s embouchure is fundamental to playing a melody, requiring near-constant lip and tongue movement.

According to Armstrong, the damage started early in his career. “In my teens, playing in that honky tonk all night long, I split my lip wide open,” Armstrong recalled in a 1966 Life interview. “Split my lip so bad in Memphis, there’s meat still missing. Happened many times. Awful. Blood run all down my shirt.”

While some of his peers sought professional help and even plastic surgery, Satchmo treated his lips using home remedies. He had a special salve he’d apply to his lips, and when callouses built up, he’d shave them down himself with a razor and take some time away from performing. One particularly nasty split in 1935 took him offstage for a year. While embouchure overuse syndrome can be common among brass players, it’s perhaps associated with Armstrong more than any other musician. Some doctors even use the term Satchmo syndrome for a tear in the lip muscle.

Armstrong Insisted on Adding Singing to His Act

Armstrong is almost as well known today for his distinctive, gravelly singing voice as he is for his trumpet skill. While he formed a vocal quartet with other kids in his neighborhood and sang in a choir at the Waif’s Home, Satchmo built his early career on the cornet and later the trumpet, not singing.

In 1924, he joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, then a big name in the New York City music scene, for an engagement at the Roseland Ballroom. Armstrong asked repeatedly to sing, yet recalled that Henderson wasn’t interested. But according to jazz drummer Kaiser Marshall, Satchmo found a way to sneak it in anyway: Roseland would host a Thursday revue of amateur performers (similar to an open mic), and one night Armstrong went on stage and performed “Everybody Loves My Baby,” both on cornet and vocals. Marshall recalled that “the crowd surely went for it … from then on they used to cry for Louis every Thursday night.”

“What A Wonderful World” Took 20 Years to Reach the U.S. Charts

Armstrong’s most popular song, “What a Wonderful World,” topped the British music charts upon its 1967 release, staying at No. 1 for 13 weeks. The inspiring tune was a hit elsewhere in Europe and South Africa, too, but because the president of Armstrong’s record company, Larry Newton, disliked the song, the record was never actually promoted in the United States. According to the song’s co-writer and producer Bob Thiele, it didn’t even crack 1,000 copies in the U.S. after its initial release.

But in 1987, 16 years after Armstrong’s death, “What a Wonderful World” was featured in the film Good Morning Vietnam. Only then did the song reach the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 33. The original album was re-released and certified gold.

Armstrong was drawn to the song because it reminded him of Corona, Queens, where he and his last wife Lucille settled down permanently in 1942. “Lucille and I, ever since we’re married, we’ve been right there in that block,” Armstrong said in 1968, according to the Louis Armstrong House. “And everybody keeps their little homes up like we do and it’s just like one big family. I saw three generations come up on that block. And they’re all with their children, grandchildren, they come back to see Uncle Satchmo and Aunt Lucille. That’s why I can say, ‘I hear babies cry/I watch them grow /they’ll learn much more/than I’ll never know.’ … So when they hand me this ‘Wonderful World,’ I didn’t look no further, that was it.” Since then, the song has become a timeless classic, featured in many other films and shows and covered by artists such as Rod Stewart and Stevie Wonder.