“Except for true jazz believers in his own country and throughout the world, this concept of Louis Armstrong as a most serious, stunningly innovative artist is unfamiliar. He was often seen in the movies and on prime-time television variety shows, and he had a number of hit records, but he was by no means held in awe by the general public. Yet this was the man who had changed the very shape of jazz as fundamentally and permanently as Beethoven had changed the shape of the symphony.”