Thread by @dean_frey

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits 🎂
📷 Eddie Adams, Opening Night, Las Vegas, 1970
"If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz & always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original."
- Duke Ellington

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 Art Kane, 1958
I love his Satchmo With Style album from that year. Wonderful Gordon Jenkins arrangements.

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
Satchmo & Duke Ellington by Herman Leonard
Paris, 1960

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
Rocking a bowtie in a shot by Philippe Halsman from 1966
"I never tried to prove nothing, just always wanted to give a good show."
With Billie Holiday in Arthur Lubin's New Orleans, 1947:

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 Haywood Magee, 1956
"Pops, music is music. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song."

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
Satchmo at his Corona.
📷 Dennis Stock, 1958
"We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter."
- Allen Ginsberg

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 Herman Leonard, 1960
"To understand his impact, you need to listen carefully to jazz before Armstrong, and then gauge what Louis added."
- @tedgioia

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 John Loengard for Life, 1965
"You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played."
- Miles Davis

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
Relaxing after a concert at the Latin Casino
📷 Dennis Stock, 1958

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 Woodward's Studio, c. 1928
@Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
Louis Armstrong & his Hot Seven, Wild Man Blues, 1927:

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 Philippe Halsman, 1966
@Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington, "Duke's Place", on The Ed Sullivan Show, December 17, 1961

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
📷 Anton Bruehl, 1935
"Night after night through the 1930s, he loosed off more fearsomely demanding trumpet virtuosity throughout full-length concerts than the creative spirit should have been able to handle."
- John Fordham

For Louis Armstrong's birthday, my favourite portraits
I can't forget this:
Tony Bennett presents his painting of Louis Armstrong to Satchmo at the Savoy Hotel, 1970