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Louis was graduated from the Waif's Home in 1915, and continued to study on the trumpet, now with the late Joe Oliver, until the New Orleans' and the world's greatest trumpet player, later to become famous as "King" Oliver. 
To Louis, however, he was "Papa Joe", and to him Louis owed his first break.  Oliver was featured trumpeter with Kid Ory's band, and when in 1919 the King decided to go to Chicago and organize a big band of his own, he put Louis in his chair with Kid Ory.
From 1918 until 1922 Armstrong played with Ory and other "pick-up" bands in New Orleans and up and down the Mississippi on the excursion boats, and then he went to Chicago too, and joined King Oliver's band at the old Royal Palm Gardens.  Late in 1924, he came to New York to join Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, but returned to Chicago in 1925 and in 1926 joined Erskine Tate at the old Vendome Theatre.  Earl Hines was the pianist in the Tate orchestra at that time, and the boys doubled, nights, into the Sunset Cafe, owned and operated by Joe Glaser, Louis' present manager.
Glaser was the first person to realize the great possibilities of Armstrong as a "name" attraction, and while Louis was doubling into the Sunset, he put his name up in lights on the marquee, on three sides—"LOUIS ARMSTRONG, WORLD'S GREATEST TRUMPETER."
That was the first time that Armstrong's name had ever been billed anywhere, but since then it has been in lights, and as the world's greatest trumpeter, all over the world. 
[[next column]] He was hit at the Sunset, too, so Joe Glaser had him organize his own band and take it out on a dance tour.  With a small combination, "Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five", he also started making recordings, among them his famed "Gut Bucket Blues","Butter and Egg Man" and Heebie-Jeebies".
Coming to New York in 1929 to play at Connie's Inn, Louis took the town by storm and wound up as the star of the stage revue, "Hot Chocolates". It was in this show that he introduced one of the numbers he has featured ever since, as a good luck charm—"Ain't Misbehaven'."  He has played it all over the world, and it's one of his jazz masterpieces, for he finishes it off with a series of the notable high C's which are his specialty.
Following "Hot Chocolates" came a long series of personal appearances from coast to coast, and engagement at the Cotton Club in Los Angeles, and a tour of Europe, beginning with the Palladium in London.
Europe kept Armstrong busy not for the original five months of his tour, but for five years, establishing him as an international favorite.  He played theatres and concerts in Paris, Glasgow, Copenhagen, Brussels, Geneva, Vienna and virtually every major city on the continent.  He is the only performer in history who has ever played twelve command performances for the King and Queen of England.