[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong reviewed

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
The following glowing review is via the Australian Dance Bands list  
and makes me even more disappointed.
I ordered this 2-CD set recently, only to be advised that it is only  
available to US and Canadian residents.
Rats.
Kind regards,
Bill

> Louis Armstrong: Home and Away
>
> by Will Friedwald
> New York Sun, September 8, 2008
>
> At first glance, the two discs that make up "Rudy Vallee's
> Fleischmann's Yeast Show and Louis' Home-Recorded Tapes" may seem
> like two batches of material thrown together for no apparent reason,
> other than that both feature previously unissued private recordings
> excavated from Louis Armstrong's own collection. Either disc,
> particularly the one with live radio performances from 1937, could be
> described as the most important Armstrong discovery to be released
> since his death in 1971. Yet taken together, they form an especially
> vivid picture of Louis Armstrong the man, musician, and mensch.
>
> The double-disc set was issued by Jazz Heritage not long after the
> 107th anniversary of Armstrong's birth last month and just in time to
> announce the start of a festival celebrating the instrument that he
> taught the world to play. It includes a recording of Armstrong on
> NBC's "Fleischmann's Yeast" radio show in 1937 and a batch of home-
> recorded tapes that have never been heard. On Sunday, the Sixth
> Annual Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT) will begins with a
> special three-horn salute to Satchmo staged at the man's own house in
> Corona, Queens.
>
> First of all, the radio performances from 1937 constitute one of the
> most significant jazz finds imaginable -- on a par with Monk and
> Coltrane at Carnegie or Bird and Dizzy at Town Hall -- because
> there's precious little live Armstrong from the (comparatively) early
> years. Notably, the Fleischmann's radio treasure trove owes its
> existence to, of all unlikely individuals, Rudy Vallee. Remembered
> fondly as a pioneering crooner, bandleader, movie comic, and early
> broadcast icon, Vallee, who also played saxophone, wasn't exactly
> regarded as a major force in jazz. However, when he took a vacation
> from April to July of 1937 (he was invited to the coronation of the
> king of England), he temporarily relinquished the reins of his
> extremely popular Fleischmann's Yeast-sponsored radio series to
> Armstrong. It was the first known example of a black musician hosting
> and starring in a major prime-time variety series.
>
> Armstrong was a genius when it came to the art and craft of
> recording, and he was able to switch on his considerable charisma
> even in an empty recording studio in the middle of the night, facing
> no one but a tired group of musicians and engineers looking at their
> watches.
>
> Armstrong explodes with energy on these 24 live tracks. Hearing him
> do a few tunes that he never otherwise recorded is no small bonus; as
> both singer and player, Armstrong is brilliant even on lesser
> products of Tin Pan Alley, like "The Love Bug Will Bite You (If You
> Don't Watch Out)," on which he turns an annoyingly repetitive lyric
> into scat-inflected virtuoso merrymaking. I'm especially fond
> of "That's Southern Hospitality" (misidentified in the booklet
> as "That's What I Like," which also was recorded by Vallee and the
> last of the Mammy Singers, Phil Harris), because it delivers a bonus
> in the form of Armstrong singing the verse as well as the chorus.
> There's also an ingenious treatment of the old college football
> march "Washington and Lee Swing," which he makes into a sequel to his
> famous parade theme "High Society."
>
> But the live versions of well-established tunes from the Armstrong
> canon are no less valuable. In general, it's said that Armstrong's
> recordings from 1935 onward (when he returned from Europe and began
> his long associations with manager Joe Glaser and Decca Records) are
> more mature and less frantic, but less inspired, than his best work
> from 1925-34. Yet the Fleischmann tracks show an Armstrong cavorting
> with as much zaniness and sheer electricity as he did on his early
> work. His version of Hoagy Carmichael's "Lazy River," which Armstrong
> had already made into a classic in 1931, is even more supercharged
> here than his original performance of the song, with musical director
> Luis Russell getting a piano solo and vocal encouragement from the
> star himself. "Lazy River" virtually launched the career of
> Armstrong's fellow Crescent City funster Louis Prima, who was
> representative of several entire generations of jazzmen who learned
> to play and sing through a process of what we could call Satchmosis.
>
> ***
>
> Whether in the radio booth or onstage, Armstrong always played
> zestfully for an audience. But on his private tapes, which were
> recorded on his own decks in his house in Queens, Armstrong mostly
> plays, sings, talks, and carries on for his own enjoyment. It's a
> much more introverted Armstrong; he offers spoken commentary on a
> variety of topics. Sampled from thousands of hours he recorded in the
> 1950s and '60s, the tapes offer Satchmo scatting over a Sousa March
> and playing an all-too-short upper register variation on "Over the
> Rainbow." He dictates letters to "Mr. Glaser," his manager, and to
> the British critic Max Jones. He exchanges wisdom with a couple of
> European trumpet students and shares adorably naughty nursery rhymes
> with a little girl. He mourns departed musicians he knew and loved,
> such as Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan, and Big Sid Catlett. At one
> point he hits upon a fruit theme and sings both "Blueberry Hill"
> and "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries," showing us, in his phrasing,
> how songs can be "Satch-uated."
>
> As for the more serious aspects of jazz history, the most essential
> performance offered here is Armstrong playing an astonishingly
> beautiful trumpet solo over the 1923 record he made of "Tears" with
> his greatest mentor, Joe King Oliver. It's a stunning moment, one of
> the most gorgeous in all of Armstrong's career. But I have to confess
> a certain fondness for his treatment of the song that compares life
> to a bowl of cherries, which had been introduced on Broadway in 1931
> by Vallee, the man who did Armstrong and American music in general
> such a major favor six years later. If anyone can provide an object
> lesson in how to "live and laugh at it all," as the song goes, it's
> Louis Armstrong.
>
> --- End forwarded message ---
>
>
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