American Masters on PBS

A 1989 profile of trumpet titan Louis Armstrong, who “set the ground rules for the way we play and hear jazz and pop music,” says narrator Hattie Winston. Armstrong (1901-71), who began playing as a teenager in his native New Orleans, is seen in a wealth of performance clips, and is recalled by colleagues, including Tony Bennett, Dave Brubeck, Doc Cheatham, Dexter Gordon, Milt Hinton and Wynton Marsalis, who calls Armstrong “truly universal.”