New book tells story behind Armstrong’s boyhood cornet

A new biography of Louis Armstrong – “Pops,” by Terry Teachout (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 496 pages, $30) – provides context to the Armstrong cornet on display in the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture’s “Jumpin’ With the Big Bands” exhibit.

On New Year’s Eve of 1912, the 11-year-old Armstrong was caught shooting a pistol (loaded only with blanks, he said) on the streets of New Orleans. Police ordered him into the Colored Waif’s Home For Boys.

Once there, he begged to be in the home’s brass band. In the summer of 1913, he got his wish, first on tambourine, then drums, then alto horn. His musical aptitude was immediately evident, and before long he became the band’s first cornetist.

The cornet on display is from the Colored Waif’s Home and is evidently one of the instruments he played there.

It may not have been Armstrong’s first cornet. He once said he had his own horn before going into the home.

But it was at the home that he really learned to play properly. He later said he played Liszt, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Mahler and Haydn – all sound technical preparation for the jazz he would later play.