Apple TV+ announces 'Black & Blues: The Colorful Ballad of Louis Armstrong'

Louis Armstrong Apple Tv Plus
Louis Armstrong Apple Tv Plus (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple TV+ has announced Black & Blues: The Colorful Ballad of Louis Armstrong.
  • The whole documentary will be told through Armstrong's own words.

Apple TV+ has announced a new documentary telling the story of Louis Armstrong. What makes this one so interesting however is the fact that it will be told entirely through the musician's own words.

The documentary, from Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Documentaries, has now officially been greenlit by Apple TV+.

The film offers a definitive look at the master musician's life and legacy as a founding father of jazz, the first pop star and a cultural ambassador of the United States. He was loved by millions worldwide but often mischaracterized for not doing enough to support the civil rights movement. In reality, his fight for social justice was fueled by his celebrity and his willingness to break his silence on issues of segregation and patriotism. With the full support of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, the filmmakers have access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival materials, including hundreds of hours of audio recordings, film footage, photographs, personal diaries and a life's worth of ephemera for exclusive use in the first significant documentary dedicated entirely to his life.

There's no telling when the new documentary will be released on Apple's streaming service, but it already sounds like a must-watch if you're even remotely interested in the man himself or his music. It'll feature hours of audio recordings and even include personal diaries.

You will of course need an Apple TV+ subscription to take the new documentary in. It runs $4.99 per month unless you're part of the Apple One party.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.