1. The author of the Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans was Louis Armstrong. There are those who believe Armstrong could not have written this autobiography or at least not without help/assistance. Armstrong only received a 5th grade level education, still others believe that Armstrong is the sole writer of this autobiography based on transcript of Satchmo and his letters that are in archives of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Dan Morgenstern compared the original transcript to Satchmo and the differences he saw were due to editing to “changing Armstrong’s three-dot style to conventionally punctuated sentence-structure.” Morgenstern believes that Armstrong has a certain style to him that isn’t replicable it’s found in his writing and his music. Louis Armstrong is a world renown musician, but he not known for his writing. Armstrong is a storyteller though, because of his larger than life personality and storytelling skills. Having the book edited made it somewhat easier to read and made a difference by fixing the structure of how the story is read.
2. The theme of Satchmo is how the child of a prostitute worked his way out of poverty and became one of America’s most influential musicians of all times. Armstrong was trying to present his to his audience how life was for him in New Orleans. He wanted to
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Many critics loved this book and some believed that he was not the author. New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, are all well-known newspapers that wrote wonderful reviews on Satchmo. Personally I did not enjoy the book because of the writing style and the tendency for the story to jump all over the place. I think Armstrong should have focused on the creating a better timeline of events and following that. I still would recommend this book to my friends who are from New Orleans and who are music lovers. I’m from the Metro Area of New Orleans and I learned a lot about not only Armstrong, but also about New Orleans culture in the