Louis Armstrong: 'West End Blues' and the Birth of Jazz

This is the story of a man finding his voice.

We have only tantalising fragments of its development: brief recordings which merely hint at hundreds of nights' hard work; in the clubs of New Orleans; on pleasure boats running up and down the Mississippi and in the crowded dancehalls of Chicago and New York

His work was to make people dance, laugh and dream: in doing so he was also helping them to hear a new sound as familiar, obvious and instantly recognisable.

For his fellow musicians, his performances and recordings were a template, a model to emulate, mapping out a new territory to explore.

This app will guide you through the results of the first couple of hundred times he performed in front of a microphone, culminating in ‘West End Blues’: a defining expression of Jazz, compelling evidence that the music had found its first fully-formed archetype, Louis Armstrong.

Screenshots

Credits

Louis was built in collaboration with Edward Anderton.

The software was written using Apple's iOS SDK. It includes "MGTemplateEngine" code by Matt Gemmell.