116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Louis Armstrong was sent to a reform school for shooting a gun
It turns out Chris Cungtion isn't the only young person who was sent away for shooting a gun into the air.
Louis Armstrong, the great cornet and trumpet player and singer from New Orleans, fired a gun at the sky when he was 12, and was sent to reform school. There, he learned to play the cornet, and a few years later he was picked up by one of the great band leaders of the time, Joe "King" Oliver.
A new biography of Armstrong has recently been published by Terry Teachout, a Wall Street Journal drama critic. I hear it's good. Read a review here.
My story about local boy Chris Cungtion and his future ran in The Gazette on Sunday.
Louis Armstrong on www.kalamu.com
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