Pictured: Sharon Preston-Folta overlooks Family Portrait collage created by her father, Louis Armstrong. Image Courtesy Little Satchmo Documentary LLC, Copyright 2021

The world knew Louis Armstrong as a towering figure of jazz music. His bright smile, gravelly voice and boundless charisma, to say nothing of his improvisational virtuosity with both the trumpet and voice, made him one of the first African American pop culture figures to “cross over” into mainstream, predominately white audiences. He rubbed shoulders with politicians, world-class artists and film stars and was later inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. To say that Armstrong cast a long shadow would be an understatement.

Sharon Preston-Folta was a bright star in that shadow. And for most of her life, this fact was kept a secret.

Her memoir, “Little Satchmo: Living in the Shadow of my Father,” recounts her life as the secret love child of Louis Armstrong, a fact she revealed publicly in 2012. Her journey with her mother Lucille Preston, who met Armstrong at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem while a dancer, took the two all over the U.S., sometimes hitting the road with Armstrong on tours and being treated like royalty along the way. “My mother really loved him and was proud of their relationship,” says Preston-Folta, “and even though we didn’t see him as often as we would’ve liked, she believed she did the right thing in keeping me a secret to protect him.”

But at this year’s Through Women’s Eyes Film Festival, Preston-Folta will share a documentary she narrated and co-produced that frames her story as less about shadows and secrets and more about love and reflection. In “Little Satchmo: The Secret of a Legend,” a documentary written and directed by John Alexander and based on Preston-Folta’s memoir, Preston-Folta revisits her story through old photographs, recordings and letters, arriving at a richer understanding 10 years after revealing her secret to the world.

“Whenever he came around for a visit, it was a big event,” says Preston-Folta, “and I’d get all dressed up, but it was never a long enough visit.” Preston-Folta remembers her parents’ relationship as mostly love-filled until a particularly intense argument that signaled the end. “We didn’t see him for a few years after that,” she says, “but my mother never stopped protecting him and he never stopped holding up his promise of supporting us.”

Ultimately, it’s a story about people doing the best they could. The memoir and film both paint Armstrong as a fundamentally good if complicated man. Preston-Folta went through life determined to shine her way out of her father’s long shadow, graduating from college and enjoying a fruitful career in advertising that led her to WUSF, where she currently works as an account executive. “I spent a lot of my adult life trying to define myself outside of being his daughter,” she says, “and my memoir really shifted something in the way I related to my past.” Nowadays, her relationship to her past is less about living in the shadow of an icon and more about honoring all of its bittersweet complexity. “As I reflect on my past in both the memoir and film, I don’t harbor any resentment. In the end, Louis Armstrong was ‘dad.’”

“Little Satchmo” is available to stream from March 10-14 as part of this year’s Through Women’s Eyes Film Festival.

Pictured: Sharon Preston-Folta overlooks Family Portrait collage created by her father, Louis Armstrong. Image Courtesy Little Satchmo Documentary LLC, Copyright 2021