Happy Birthday, Pops! With Love From Little Satchmo
L-R, Sharon Preston-Folta, Victoria Crosdale / WUSF Public Media; Looking through pictures of Satchmo, image courtesy of Little Satchmo Documentary LLC, ©2021
Here are a few ways to celebrate Louis Armstrong’s August 4 birthday: Pops will be honored and celebrated at the annual Satchmo Summerfest at the
For most of Sharon Preston-Folta’s life, she kept a profound secret: Her father is jazz legend Louis Armstrong. The public believed for decades that Armstrong did not have any children. But Preston-Folta changed that 10 years ago when she revealed in a memoir that she is his daughter.
The Sarasota, Florida resident is sharing her story again, this time on screen in the documentary Little Satchmo. It’s playing at film festivals around the world this year and kicked off the 2022 season of the PBS series REEL SOUTH.
Preston-Folta said the world-famous musician and cultural icon felt like he couldn’t publicly acknowledge a child born from an affair. “For anybody back then in the 1950s and ’60s it was taboo,” she said. “Just add the fact that Black people were not considered equal and were fighting for civil rights, it would take them back even further.”
But privately, Preston-Folta was part of Armstrong’s life.
