When Christopher Renshaw was growing up in England in the 1950s and ‘60s, everybody knew about Louis Armstrong. “He was an icon for me as a child,” he said. “He was just there — he’s smiling, he’s funny.”

But when Renshaw — whose directing credits include the 1996 Broadway production of “The King and I” and “Taboo,” which he conceived with Boy George — was approached about creating an Armstrong musical, he quickly learned that the musician was far more than just the affable, popular entertainer he saw on television.

Armstrong’s story spans five decades, numerous musical and social upheavals, and his own creative breakthroughs from the revolutionary 1920s recordings with his Hot Five band to worldwide celebrity with the ‘60s pop smashes “Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World.”

That story is now being told on Broadway in “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” which is in previews at Studio 54, following a 2021 premiere in Miami and runs in New Orleans and Chicago. For the show’s creative team, exploring the offstage struggles and tensions of this cultural and musical titan was as important as illustrating his pioneering, radical work.

“Louis Armstrong was a real Black man,” James Monroe Iglehart, who is portraying Armstrong and is one of the directors, said, noting the ways Armstrong’s image was cleaned up and deracinated. “We worked really hard to show that side of him, the good and the bad.”

“A Wonderful World” is broken into “chapters” covering four locations in Armstrong’s life: New Orleans, the city of his birth; Chicago, where he joined his mentor King Oliver’s band and transformed the way jazz was played; Hollywood, where he starred in dozens of films; and his home in Queens. It emphasizes the stories of his four wives, and features almost 30 songs.

During a recent rehearsal break, Renshaw and Iglehart, along with Aurin Squire, who wrote the show’s book, and Branford Marsalis, who did the arrangements and orchestrations, gathered in the downstairs lounge at Studio 54 to talk about some of the songs that are central to the show — and to Louis Armstrong’s unparalleled life and career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

1928, “West End Blues”

Iglehart: This song lets the audience know the show is starting. It’s pitch black in the theater, and you hear the riff and people start clapping. We didn’t want to try to put a narrative to such a masterpiece; we were like, let’s just let people know this is what it is. When that trumpet lick starts, you can feel the energy in the room come up.

Marsalis: There’s nothing like it.

1929, “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue”

Iglehart: As an actor, you don’t always want to come to work and see lynchings, but historically, there are things we need to talk about. So we have a moment of that, but we also have a moment of emotional sadness with his breakup with his first wife, Daisy Parker. We use this song to push him forward — “I’ve got to get out of here and do something different.”

That song will be part of the African American experience forever. What I love about Louis’ version is that you can hear the melancholy, but there’s always hope in his voice. “I’m going to sing this song so you know what I’m talking about, but I’m hoping that maybe when the song is over, we never have to go through this again.”

1926, “Heebie Jeebies”

Iglehart: People were scatting, just like folks were freestyling and breakdancing before it was on TV, but no one had recorded scat singing. (“Heebie Jeebies”) completely changed the trajectory of what singers were doing at that time.

Louis loved to embellish stories, and the story he tells is he was at the studio recording and the music pages fell. He looks up at the engineer and says, “Keep going,” and he starts scatting. Now, his wife at the time, Lil Hardin, said that Louis was such a good musician, he memorized everything. He knew exactly what he was going to do. But the more fun story is the story Louis tells.

1931 “(I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead) You Rascal, You”

Squire: The history of songs that are more comedic, this is where we get it from. As kids, you play the dozens or you take songs and turn them into, like, “I’ll kill you, blah, blah, blah.” This is part of that tradition. I think of Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone,” making a funny love song, but a song that makes people smile and want to sing it again and again.

Iglehart: Louis was on tour with his band, and his manager had his wife on the bus. The cops saw a white woman on the bus, and they put them all in jail. And the only way that Louis could get out without having any trouble was that he had to sing for the police. Now, most brothers would just go up there, do the damn concert, and get out. Louis was like, “Sure, I’ll do the concert, but I’m going to dedicate a song to the Memphis Police Department.” And he sang “(I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead) You Rascal, You.” He could have been killed — he was Louis Armstrong, but he was still a Black man. And they all clapped. That’s just part of his legend.

1964, “Hello, Dolly!”

Iglehart: After rock ‘n’ roll started, jazz kind of went by the wayside. But the people who wrote “Hello, Dolly!” wanted to sell the show with a pop star, like Disney does now. So Louis does his Dixieland version of “Hello, Dolly!” and it completely captivates the world.

In the show, we have this moment of extreme tension, and the only way to release the tension is to do that song. It was his Little Rock Nine moment. (Armstrong canceled a 1957 State Department tour of the Soviet Union to protest Gov. Orval Faubus’ resistance to integrating Little Rock’s Central High School in Arkansas.) People didn’t realize Louis was Black till he said something, and then all of a sudden, he was Black. So he’s been blacklisted, they’re mad at him, “How dare you be Black in front of us?” And then he drops “Hello, Dolly!” America’s so interesting; they hate you today, but if you come out with a hit, they will love you again.

1967, “What a Wonderful World”

Renshaw: Everybody regards “Wonderful World” as kind of a corny, schmaltzy song. I’ve always thought it had a wonderful irony. We’ve learned that the world isn’t as wonderful all the time as one thinks. It always stirs me — it’s a song of great wisdom, and all his life experience and all the choices he made, good or bad, are in it, and yet he still manages to sound hopeful. I think it’s a masterpiece.

Marsalis: He has an emotional gravitas, as well as an emotional gravity, when he sings. In music, there’s what is this song harmonically, melodically, lyrically, but what’s most powerful is what is the song about emotionally? The great singers and the great musicians can hone in on what that is. And it’s not because of his gravelly voice. It’s that thing that he had. He was just that guy.