Louis armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. He knocked the beatles off the top of the charts, wrote the finest of all jazz autobiographies--without a co...Louis armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. He knocked the beatles off the top of the charts, wrote the finest of all jazz autobiographies--without a collaborator--and created collages that have been compared to the art of romare bearden.