The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (36 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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Bucket's Got a Hole in It," "Panama," and "New Orleans Function" (not really a tune but a miniature suite re-creating a New Orleans funeral, narrated by Armstrong himself), are by the most ''all-star" edition of Armstrong's All Stars, with trombonist Jack Teagarden (who takes a typically sly vocal and masterful blues-inflected solo on "Bucket"), ex-Ellington New Orleans clarinetist Barney Bigard, pianist Earl Hines, bassist Arvell Shaw, and drummer Cozy Cole. After World War II, when times got hard for big bands, Armstrong formed the All Stars as a more economically viable touring group.
A very good set documenting this transitional period in Armstrong's career is
Pops: The 1940s' Small-Band Sides
(RCA/Bluebird 6378-2-RB), featuring Armstrong in a variety of situations in 1946 and 1947, most of which find him paired with Teagarden for some real vocal and instrumental high points. Five tunes recorded at Armstrong's famous May 1947 Town Hall concert are stand-outs, especially "Back O' Town Blues" and Pops and Tea's duet on "Rockin' Chair." Other highlights are the small-band versions of "I Want a Little Girl" and "Sugar," recorded with trombonist Vic Dickenson, and two performances of tunes written for the movie
New Orleans
(which starred Billie Holiday in addition to Armstrong): "Where the Blues Were Born in New Orleans" and the well-known "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" The former, a fairly corny tune, contains three thrilling out choruses with Pops reaching simultaneously for the stars and into the gutbucket. The album notes, by Dan Morgenstern, are another good reason to pick this one up.
The All Stars can be heard at the top of their game in two albums recorded for Columbia in 1954 and 1955:
Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy
(CK 40242) and
Satch Plays Fats
(CK 40378). Both feature Armstrong at his best, playing compositions by the legendary "Father of the Blues," Handy, and by stride pianist, singer, and entertainer Fats Waller. The Handy set is remarkable for the utter relaxation of Armstrong's vocals and horn playing on "Aunt Hagar's Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "Memphis Blues," "Hesitating Blues," and the others, and for the range of moods available in this kind of treatment of the blues form. A few changes have been made for this new issue of the material, with several previously unissued takes replacing the ones that had been there; one unfortunate choice is the elimination of a great moment when, through tape overdubbing, Armstrong sang a duet with himself on the bouncing "Atlanta Blues." But the mood throughout this set, of elegant barrelhouse sophistication and relaxed concentration, is still unmatched.
Satch Plays Fats
is as good, although the mood is a hair less deep than on the Handy set; Armstrong gives the royal treatment to the cream of Waller, including "Honeysuckle Rose," "Ain't Misbehavin'," and "Black and Blue," as well as perhaps less known gems such as "Blue Turning Grey Over You" and
 
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"I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby." The buoyancy Armstrong achieves in his phrasing, both on horn and in his vocals, is a marvel and is a perfect answer to anybody who still thinks that Armstrong's later work somehow represents a decline.
A true feast for fans of the All Stars is Decca's four-CD set
Louis Armstrong: The California Concerts
(Decca/GRP GRD-4-613), which shows the performing side of the band. The first disc and a half contain the results of an evening with the Teagarden-Bigard-Hines All Stars at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in 1951 doing a mix of pop tunes ("Honeysuckle Rose," "Just You, Just Me") and Armstrong standards ("Some Day," ''Back O' Town Blues"). The rest of the set is taken up with a mighty demonstration of the 1955 band, with Trummy Young in place of Teagarden and Billy Kyle in place of Hines, in action over the course of one evening at Hollywood's Crescendo Club, performing their standard program of New Orleans tunes, pop tunes, and Armstrong favorites. Armstrong's energy and presence are phenomenal throughout.
Other Settings
Although the All Stars were Armstrong's touring and performance band for most of the last twenty-five years of his life, he recorded in many other settings, including with big bands, string orchestras, and choirs and in encounters with such eminences as Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.
An excellent collection drawing mainly from the 1950s and focusing on Armstrong's singing is
Louis Armstrong/The Best of the Decca Years, Volume 1: The Singer
(MCA MCAD-31346). It contains such hits as "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," "Blueberry Hill," and "La Vie en Rose," as well as "That Lucky Old Sun," recorded with a large choir in 1949, "Gone Fishin'," a duet between Pops and Bing Crosby, "You Rascal You," a running dialogue with singer and alto saxophonist Louis Jordan, and "The Gypsy," a pop tune that Pops raises to the heights. These sides present Armstrong as the perfect fusion of entertainer and jazz master.
Even better is the material collected on
Louis Armstrong. The Silver Collection
(Verve 823 446-2). Culled from two albums recorded in 1957 with a large orchestra conducted by Russ Garcia, it presents the trumpeter and singer as an interpreter of the best kind of popular standards, both well known and lesser known. Armstrong weaves pure magic on "Body and Soul," "Have You Met Miss Jones," "East of the Sun," "You're Blase," "I've Got the World on a String," and ten others from the likes of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and Duke Ellington. His singing was never richer, and his trumpet playing hits the bull's-eye every time. His phrasing invariably illuminates sides
 
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of the melodies that one wouldn't hear with other singers. This is one of the very best Armstrong items available.
Three late-1950s sets that match Armstrong with one of the few singers who could give him a run for his money are
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis
(Verve 825 373-2),
Ella and Louis Again
(Verve 825 374-2), and
Porgy and Bess
(Verve 827 475-2). The repertoire on the first two again consists of excellent popular standards. The combination of their two contrasting vocal timbres makes for a perfect ying and yang balance, and they are heard in a small-group setting that affords them maximum elbow room.
Ella and Louis
has gems like "Can't We Be Friends," "Moonlight in Vermont," and ''Cheek to Cheek," but
Ella and Louis Again
may have a slight edge, if only for the riotous version of "Stompin' at the Savoy." The subtle one-upsmanship on "A Fine Romance" and the perfect groove on "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" aren't bad either. The
Porgy and Bess
set has orchestrations by Russ Garcia that nicely show off the lyrical qualities of Gershwin's music. Armstrong's high spots include "Summertime," on which he accompanies Fitzgerald's closing chorus with a sublime wordless vocal, "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," and "It Ain't Necessarily So," which he invests with a brooding grandeur in his trumpet solo.
One cake that didn't rise as well as some of the others is
Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson
(Verve 825 713-2), a collection of fine standards in a promising small-group setting of pianist Peterson, guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Louis Bellson. But to my ears it never reaches the level one might expect, except on an impromptu duet between Armstrong and Ellis on "There's No You."
I would almost say the same thing about another summit meeting from which one might have expected apocalyptic results.
Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington: The Complete Sessions
(Roulette CDP 7938442) is the document of two 1961 sessions on which Ellington sat in on piano with the Armstrong All Stars in a program consisting entirely of Ellington compositions. The results are a little disappointing, as if very little thought went into the proceedings beforehand. The session's producers could have at least tuned the piano. Still, there are some amazing moments here - Armstrong's vocals on "I'm Just a Lucky So and So" and the rarely heard "Azalea" are fantastic, as is his trumpet lead on "Drop Me Off in Harlem." The standout of the entire set is a version of "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)," on which Armstrong plays a full trumpet chorus accompanied only by Ellington's piano, then sings a definitive vocal. The set is more than worth having, but if only they had been able to record Armstrong with the full Ellington band ...
 
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Hello, Dolly
Armstrong's universality and durability have never been so startlingly shown as when his recording of the pop ditty "Hello, Dolly" reached the top of the popular music charts in 1964, beating out the most popular group in the world, the Beatles. The album
Louis Armstrong's Hello, Dolly!
(MCA MCAD-538) will be a big surprise to anyone who thinks of that period as one of dilution of Armstrong's talents or of inconsequential commercial throwaways. The title tune is a perfect and compact statement - an intro, a vocal chorus, an instrumental chorus with the All Stars playing a loose, jammed, New Orleans-style version of the melody with Pops in the lead, then another half-chorus of vocal, a tag, and out. Armstrong's rephrasing of the melody in the ensemble passage is a perfect example of his artistry.
Most of the twelve tracks here follow "Dolly"'s routine of vocal chorus/instrumental interlude/vocal chorus. The buoyancy of the interludes is hard to believe; Armstrong's phrasing is way behind the beat, the ultimate in both relaxation and swing (listen to his solo on "A Kiss to Build a Dream On"). The same goes for his singing. The repertoire is comprised of good pop tunes like "A Lot of Living to Do" and "It's Been a Long, Long Time,'' as well as remakes of some of Armstrong's best-known hits, including "Jeepers Creepers," "Blueberry Hill," and "Someday." His trumpet solo on the bright-tempoed "Be My Life's Companion" and his two vocal choruses on "Jeepers Creepers" are as thrilling as anything he ever recorded. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is a watered-down commercial greatest-hits package. There is a joy in this set that is extraordinary, even for Armstrong.
Armstrong repeated his commercial triumph a few years later with "Cabaret" and "What a Wonderful World," which achieved a second life by being featured in the film
Good Morning, Vietnam
. Both can be heard on
What a Wonderful World
(MCA MCAD-25204), a somewhat less satisfactory collection than
Hello, Dolly!
because of the addition of some ricky-tick strings and a few songs that are uncomfortably corny, several of which were written by the session's producer, Bob Thiele. Corny or not, though, Armstrong dives in as if they were masterpieces. The collection lacks the sheer elation of the
Hello, Dolly!
material, and the trumpet is spotlighted less, but it's worth having just for the title tune, especially at the budget price the set sells for.
Recorded a few weeks before Armstrong's seventieth birthday, another album also called
What a Wonderful World
(RCA/Bluebird 8310-2-RB) features Armstrong in an unlikely setting combining rock rhythms and either a string section or a big band in an eclectic program including "Everybody's Talkin'," "We Shall Overcome," and "Give Peace a Chance." By this time, Pops had set
 
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the trumpet down for health reasons, but his vocals are as good as ever, and the spirit in the studio, in which a birthday party was in progress (with guests Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Tony Bennett, and many others), undoubtedly contributed to his good humor. All the guests joined him in singing "We Shall Overcome," a truly moving experience. There's a lesson here, though, too. Almost none of what Armstrong recorded in his nearly fifty-year career sounds dated, but this attempt to put him into a context that seemed modern at the time (his duet with Leon Thomas on "The Creator Has a Master Plan," for example) resulted in Armstrong almost sounding corny in spots. Finally, his own transcendental hipness and genuineness carried the day, but it was a close call. The truly great is always contemporary; you don't need to update it.
No one should go through life without being acquainted with the music of Louis Armstrong. He addressed the most basic and the most exalted human questions through song, and the results can, in Wynton Marsalis's phrase, "enrich your life" beyond description. His work is as timeless as Shakespeare's or Bach's, and there is no improving on it.
Trumpets No End
An entire school of trumpet playing grew up around Armstrong and in his wake. Armstrong's language was so broad and universal that artists as different as Buck Clayton and Harry Edison, or Red Allen and Bunny Berigan, could use it to tell very different stories.
Two contemporaries of Armstrong developed styles quite distinct from Armstrong's; while neither recorded extensively, both left notable bodies of work. One, Bix Beiderbecke, was a talented player who died of alcoholism in 1931 at the age of twenty-eight. To many, Beiderbecke was a romantic incarnation of the Roaring '20s, and his reputation was inflated by certain writers and musicians after his death. Much of the confusing and adulatory writing about Beiderbecke has made it difficult to see clearly what his true worth was. Recently, it has been the fashion to disparage him somewhat. Although Beiderbecke was not the god that he was made into by some, he did have something real and valuable that was all his own.
Beiderbecke's sound was very clear, his conception precise and crisp, his solos little gems of construction, intelligence, and grace. If he had a fault as a jazz musician, it was that he was an almost complete stranger to the blues (the musical form, not the existential state). Beiderbecke was one of the few jazz musicians to figure out a way to make music that is indisputably jazz without a heavy component of the blues. But it left him a somewhat narrow musician; the blues are an antidote to sentimentality, an essential antibody.

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