Pops was truly a great master. Cats like him, Bird, Miles, Diz and a few others forever changed American music, and Louis was right there at its birth.
Here's an ironic footnote to his story. He first played trumpet (cornet, to be accurate) in a boys home in Storeyville, where he was sent after being picked up for firing a pistol into the air while reveling on New Years. If he hadn't stepped slightly outside the law that day, jazz may never have taken the route that it did. And to throw in a little irony, and I just recently found this out myself, his home in New Orleans was just recently torn down in order to build...
a police station!
Kind of "circle of life" in a way, isn't it?