What do musicians Kermit Ruffins, Trombone Shorty and Yoshio Tayama have in common? All have a deep and abiding appreciation and love for the music and life and times of trumpeter/bandleader Louis Armstrong. Although Armstrong passed away in the summer of 1971, his life and legacy continue to be celebrated every August, the month of his birth, in New Orleans.

     A friend and I attended the annual Louis Armstrong Satchmo SummerFest on August 3-6 in New Orleans. This free festival is organized by the people at French Quarter Festivals Inc., a nonprofit in New Orleans that puts on the annual French Quarter Festival every April. This was my first visit to the Crescent City since last August. As we all know, the city nearly missed a direct hit by Hurricane Katrina last August 29.

     Slowly, the city is recovering and there are signs of life again, at least in the French Quarter. Other parts of the city, like New Orleans East, remain devastated nearly a year after the flood, but even there, natives told me piles of junk here and there had been picked up and hauled away.

     The Satchmo SummerFest is a celebration of the life, times and lasting music of Louis Armstrong, the trumpeter, bandleader and international statesmen who took jazz and blues, America's indigenous art forms, to the rest of the world.

     Because of wind damage from Katrina to the old Louisiana State Museum on Esplanade, this year's outdoor stages were moved to the nearby French Market, while seminars, lectures and film screenings were held in the air conditioned comfort of the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park Visitors Center. The smaller quarters proved adequate for seminars and lectures, which spanned the gamut from "The Parables of Louis Armstrong - His Life as a Series of Moral Lessons" to "I Got My Mojo Workin', Voodoo and Jazz in New Orleans" by Ina Fandrich. Local photographer and tour guide John McCusker delivered a talk on "Jazz Landmarks After Katrina," while the keynote address on Armstrong's life as a series of moral lessons was delivered by New York musician and jazz historian David Ostwald. Ostwald leads the Gully Low Jazz Band, a group inspired by the music of Armstrong and other early jazz musicians from the 1920s and 1930s, most Wednesday evenings at Birdland in Manhattan. Among the many points Ostwald demonstrated in his talk was how giving Armstrong was of his time. After concerts, Armstrong would not leave a theater or club venue until all autographs had been signed, and he would often answer all of his fan mail himself, in long, rambling letters, often signing them, "red beans and ricely yours." As an African-American, Armstrong often defied the racist attitudes prevalent in America in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and he often demonstrated his opposition to the way things were, racially, through nonviolent acts of defiance. A quarter century later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was doing the same thing and he brought about the beginnings of societal change.

     When we think about it in terms of rock and roll history, it's easy to see that Armstrong was the first hippie, and way ahead of his time through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. He was generous with his time to fans, although often exhausted after strings of one-nighters, and he often recorded conversations at home and on the road with a reel to reel tape recorder. These tapes are available for listening at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens, where Armstrong spent the last 30 years of his life when not on the road. Through the course of his career, with his music, kind actions and good conscience, Armstrong made a lasting impact on thousands of people around the world.

     The annual Satchmo Club Strut at venues along Frenchman Street is always a highlight of the Satchmo SummerFest. Here, patrons of the festival with a wristband are free to mosey from club to club and check out music, some of it performed by bands on balconies overlooking Frenchman Street. Performers at this year's club strut included New Jersey-based trombonist and bandleader Steve Turre, Minneapolis-based saxophonist Frank Morgan, and dozens of local musicians, some of whom have risen in recent years to national prominence—people like Charmaine Neville, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Davell Crawford, Ellis Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins and Washboard Chaz. Turre put in a truly inspired set at Café Brasil on Frenchman Street, followed by saxophonist Morgan. Both musicians mixed it up with the locals, adding to the level of musical excitement inside the club. All of the venues along Frenchman Street, including Café Brasil, d.b.a., and the newly opened Ray's Boom Boom Room, offered excellent entertainment on Saturday and Sunday nights. We caught a soul-stirring set by singer John Boutte' at d.b.a. on Saturday night, and the club hosted a brass band mini-festival on Sunday night, when many festival patrons were probably too wiped out for another late night of music.

     The weekend days at Satchmo SummerFest often present some tough choices for patrons of the festival, who may be torn between seeing a band on one of the outdoor stages and staying in the cooler confines of the museum for film screenings, lectures and seminars. This year's festival was scaled back, for space reasons, to just three stages, but there was still a great variety of music indigenous to New Orleans being performed.

     Particularly impressive on the brass band stage were the Soul Rebels, who delivered brass band versions of "Grazin' in the Grass" and the I Dream of Jeanie TV show theme, among other tunes, and Ruffins' performance to close the festival on Sunday afternoon was particularly inspired, joined as he was by Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra drummer (and New Orleans native) Herlin Riley. Joining Ruffins onstage for a finale were Tokyo-based trumpeter Yoshio Tayama and Trombone Shorty, who delivered a soul-stirring version of "Bourbon Street Parade."

     To stay informed of the lineup for next year's Louis Armstrong Satchmo SummerFest or next spring's French Quarter Festival, visit www.fqfi.org.