[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong reviewed -- Buffalo News, June 21, 2014

[Robert Ringwald]

Louis Armstrong All-Stars, Columbia and RCA Victor Live Recordings (Mosaic, nine
disc box)
by Jeff Simon
Buffalo News, June 21, 2014
It often seems as if Louis Armstrong is, in his way, one of the most difficult of
all the greatest jazz geniuses to "get." If you've been raised on jazz as a music
of sophistication and complexity, Armstrong, his act and his playing can cause nothing
but consternation.
That's because everything you need to hear is on the surface, totally open and inviting
to everyone who's willing to listen. There's nothing really hidden. In this, one
of the sets that distinguish the whole purpose of Mosaic records' unvanquished devotion
to the jazz heritage, you're hearing Louis Armstrong in live performance from the
late '40s (a May 1947 concert in New York's Town Hall) to a 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
The bands were all called his "All-Stars" though there is a notable difference with
a late-'40s Armstrong All-Star band with Bobby Hackett, Jack Teagarden, Bob Haggart
and Sid Catlett to the later bands with Trummy Young, Edmond Hall and drummer Barrett
Deems. In this era, Armstrong was becoming what we would now call a "brand," mostly
on record through the guidance and efforts of one of the greatest of all jazz midwives
on record, Columbia's George Avakian. It was routine to acknowledge that no one could
imitate his seminal genius, but no jazz musician could avoid his influence either.
And to acknowledge even more the love inspired around the world.
But this is also the era where because he was so open and extroverted, there were
both musicians and, especially non-comprehending audiences, who dismissed him as
archaic and having gone commercial and even as an "Uncle Tom" (to which Billie Holiday's
answer had soulful perfection: if he's an Uncle Tom, "Louis Toms from the heart").
There are nine discs here in wonderful celebration of the ways in which, with George
Avakian's help as producer, Armstrong kept the flame of his own music roaring in
the company of one of most buoyant and loved live jazz acts that the music ever had.
There are times when the line between complicated, Walleresque self-parody and holy
guilelessness is almost erased completely. Nine discs of exalted jazz history, available
by mail only from Mosaic Records, 425 Fairfield Ave., Suite 421, Stamford, Conn.
06902 or online from
www.mosaicrecords.com
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-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

“We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.” -Will Rogers