Happy putative birthday to Louis Armstrong, who would've been 103 if he were alive today - and the story of his birth on July 4th, 1900 were at all true.

Pop music will forever be in Armstrong's debt: listening to his earliest recordings with the Hot Five, you can trace a direct line from his natural singing voice through crooners like Crosby and Sinatra to such marble-mouth enunciators as Kurt Cobain. By simply throwing off the affectations that were linked to pop singing in his day, by being himself, Armstrong stylistically liberated generations of singers to come. Even if he wasn't really born on Independence Day, the man should've been.