[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong + Preservation Hall

[Stephen G Barbone]

This posted on another Jazz List today:

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


Below from a story on National Public Radio this morning:

"Thanks to some nimble engineering, Louis Armstrong has a new song  
coming out, complete with a whole new band. So what if he's been dead  
for nearly 40 years?

On Preservation, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band backs up a number of  
singers, including Andrew Bird, Tom Waits, Brandi Carlile and Pete  
Seeger. Armstrong recorded "Rockin' Chair" a number of times, but he  
gets the Preservation Hall treatment courtesy of Earl Scioneaux III,  
the engineer responsible for this trick of time.

The vocals from this new version were taken from a 1962 live recording  
with trombonist Jack Teagarden. As Scioneaux tells Gwen Thompkins in  
an interview, you can even hear audience laughter in the background.

It was quite a feat to tease out Armstrong's vocal and sneak in  
Preservation Hall Jazz Band's musicians. It happened in phases. First,  
Scioneaux isolated snippets of Armstrong's voice. Then the musicians  
got a "tempo reference" from the original recordings to make a backing  
track. The burden of replicating Armstrong's signature trumpet sound  
went to Mark Braud."

I'm generally not a fan of this type of over-dubbing the dead, but  
it's better to have Armstrong musically cannibalized by the  
Preservation Hall Jazz Band than by Kenny G. as was the case a few  
years ago.

You can listen to this 4 min story online at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123653650

also, there you can listen to the Armstrong track as well as a track  
with Tom Waits as guest vocalist.