Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong’s extraordinary early work -- captured on the 10-CD set, Louis Armstrong: The Columbia, Okeh & RCA Victor Recordings 1925-1933 -- forms the wellspring of jazz and much of American popular music, the source from which all that followed drew direction and inspiration. Armstrong’s revolutionary trumpet playing established the solo improvisation as the focus of jazz performance, while his rhythmic ease added a new swinging dimension to the music. His equally inventive singing, loose and improvisatory yet always deeply emotive, has affected vocalists for nearly a century. In other words, he made the world swing.

Transforming jazz into high art and imbuing popular singing with a previously unheard creative edge, Armstrong quickly became an international icon. His natural hipness, combined with the joie de vivre and endearing humanism that permeates all his music, kept Armstrong a beloved representative for America and its arts over the course of his five decades in the public eye.

Such masterly late 1920's Hot Five and Hot Seven group performances as “Potato Head Blues,” “Cornet Chop Suey,” “Struttin' With Some Barbecue” and the epochal “West End Blues” rewrote the book for instrumental improvisation, while “Heebie Jeebies,” with Armstrong’s stunning scat singing, broke open the frontiers of vocal interpretation.  Among the other timeless performances cut for the Columbia and Okeh labels are “Weather Bird,” Armstrong’s telepathic duet with pianist Earl Hines; the radical transformation of “Stardust,” and definitive versions of “Ain’t Misbehavin',” “St. James Infirmary,” “Basin St. Blues” and “Body and Soul.”

Armstrong’s move to RCA found him caressing great popular songs like “I Gotta Right To Sing the Blues” and “I Got The World On A String,” while continuing to lay down the law with such bravura instrumental sides as “Mahagony Hall Stomp” and “High Society.”

No one had ever heard anything like Armstrong when these recordings were first issued; today, his joyous message resounds loud and clear.

The collection commences with the celebrated and seminal Hot Five (Louis’s first as a leader) & Hot Seven recordings, including masterpieces like "Heebie Jeebies,” "Muskrat Ramble,” "Potato Head Blues,” "Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” "West End Blues,” "Basin Street Blues,” "Weather Bird,” "St. James Infirmary,” "Ain’t Misbehavin,’” "Body And Soul," "Stardust," and many more, all recorded for Columbia/Okeh between 1925 and 1932.

Remastered by the multi-Grammy-winning engineer Mark Wilder, in conjunction with producer Michael Brooks, the enduring beauty of Armstrong’s message can be heard with an unmatched sonic clarity.