Louis Armstrong Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana

Louis Daniel Armstrong — Satchmo — was born on August 4, 1901, in a shotgun house on Jane Alley in the Back o' Town neighbourhood of New Orleans, one of the city's poorest districts. He grew up in Storyville and the surrounding streets, was sent to the Colored Waifs' Home for Boys at twelve after firing a pistol in the street on New Year's Eve, and it was there that he received his first formal music instruction on cornet from Peter Davis. By the time he left the home, he was already exceptional. His teenage years were spent playing in New Orleans's rich ecosystem of brass bands, dance halls, and riverboats before he was summoned to Chicago by Joe "King" Oliver in 1922.

Armstrong's impact on jazz — and on American popular music — is without parallel. He transformed the trumpet into the dominant solo instrument of jazz, invented scat singing, developed the art of improvisation to a degree no one had previously approached, and brought jazz from a regional novelty to a global art form. His Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of 1925-28 are the point at which jazz became something entirely new; his popular recordings of the 1930s and beyond brought him to audiences worldwide. He was simultaneously the most innovative musician of his era and its most beloved entertainer.

The Jane Alley birthplace in Back o' Town no longer exists — the area was extensively redeveloped. New Orleans honours Armstrong throughout the city: Louis Armstrong Park in the Tremé, the Louis Armstrong International Airport, and a statue on Basin Street all acknowledge his central place in the city's identity. The New Orleans Jazz Museum and the Tremé neighbourhood — where much of early jazz was developed — are the living heritage of the world Armstrong came from.