Louis Armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. He knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts, wrote the finest of all jazz autobiographies—without a collaborator—and created collages that have been compared to the art of Romare Bearden. The ranks of his admirers included Johnny Cash, Jackson Pollock, and Orson Welles. But offstage, Armstrong could be introspective and vindictive. He was almost universally beloved, but had an explosive temper, and a larger-than-life personality far tougher and more sharp-edged than his worshiping fans ever knew.

Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal's drama critic and arts columnist, has drawn on a cache of important new sources unavailable to previous Armstrong biographers, including hundreds of private recordings of backstage and after-hours conversations that Armstrong made throughout the second half of his life, to craft a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure.

For the first time, readers will get the full, accurate versions of such storied events as Armstrong's 1930 marijuana arrest and his legendary quarrel with President Eisenhower. They'll learn about Armstrong's rough and tumble childhood in New Orleans' notorious Storyville district, the years spent with his prostitute mother, the estrangement from his father, and the time spent at reform school. Readers will also gain a deeper understanding of his rise to fame in Chicago and Harlem, his multiple marriages, and his jump to the top of the music charts.