Not long after Louis Armstrong's birth in New Orleans' worst slum half a century ago, something began to rise above its sordidness and violence.  Jazz—a new kind of music! Louis' instant response to it was prophetic.  At thirteen he organized a quartet, practiced singing "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,"and won the plaudits and pennies of a delighted audience hanging out of windows and gathering on street corners.

That same year a New year's Eve prank changed the whole course of Louis' life.  He was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif's Home where, to his utter rapture, he was taught to play the cornet in the school band.  There, too, he received the nickname Satchmo.  "You got a mouth as big as a satchel!" cried one of his friends when Louis grinned at him.  Two years after he had left the Home he was given a cornet of his own and job playing it, but there were still hard times ahead.  Success in the jazz world he loved alternated with setbacks that might have broken a less buoyant spirit—but not Armstrong's.  If luck failed him in one place he tried another, traveling the length and breadth of the country.  It was in Chicago that he switched from the cornet to the trumpet, which has brought him his greatest triumphs at home and abroad.

In this sparkling biography Miss Eaton has captured the special genius of her famous hero and all the color and sound and excitement of his world. 

From the dust jacket