[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong reviewed - Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2014

[Graham Young]

Where can I order this?


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From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of Robert Ringwald
Sent: May-29-14 5:42 PM
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Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong reviewed - Wall Street Journal, May
27, 2014

His Renaissance on Record
by Tom Nolan
Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2014
Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) performed in public for most of his life:
singing for coins as a child in the roughest streets of pre-World War I New
Orleans, playing trumpet and vocalizing in legendary Chicago and New York
jazz bands of the 1920s and '30s, and entertaining huge throngs from the
U.S. to Europe to Africa to Asia in the '50s and '60s. Performing for
audiences (along with making records and movies) made "Satchmo" Armstrong
one of the most famous and beloved persons on the planet.
And it was in-person performing that rescued Armstrong's music from the
artistic doldrums into which it had drifted after World War II.
In the late 1940s, fronting a big-band out of step with the times and
recording best-selling but saccharine-sounding vocal platters, Armstrong was
being scorned by jazz critics and despaired over by devotees of the earlier
hot music he'd helped invent. The renaissance in his sound and reputation
came in 1947, when the charismatic performer pared down his ensemble to a
combo of "All Stars" for a series of concert-hall appearances that played to
his strengths as a virtuoso trumpeter, an inspiring leader, and a witty and
emotional singer.
That period of reinvention is vividly presented on "The Columbia and RCA
Victor Live Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars," an
ear-opening, nine-CD Mosaic boxed set to be released next week. Annotated by
Armstrong biographer and archivist Ricky Riccardi, the package documents
performances from 1947 to 1958 in venues from New York to Amsterdam to
Accra.
The first instance here of the All Stars template Armstrong would follow the
rest of his career is a late-night recital at New York's Town Hall in the
spring of 1947.
Armstrong commands immediate attention with the up-tempo "Cornet Chop Suey,"
a rhythmically intricate number he wrote in 1924 -- and plays here with a
lively urgency that makes it seem as fresh as a Dizzy Gillespie bebop line.
The brooding, soaring "Dear Old Southland" (copyright 1921), based on the
spiritual "Deep River," is done by Armstrong in duet with pianist Dick Cary
and sounds even more soulful for its secular setting.
"Our Monday Date," "Pennies From Heaven," "Ain't Misbehavin'" -- the hits
from decades past keep coming, infused by Armstrong and colleagues with
matchless fire and poignancy.
"This is American music, concert-style," emcee Fred Robbins states during
the next recorded All Stars gig, six months later at Carnegie Hall. Among
Armstrong's steady colleagues now are trombonist-singer Jack Teagarden,
clarinetist Barney Bigard and vocalist Velma Middleton. All the stars
through the years would be given featured numbers -- including bassists and
drummers. Teagarden is outstanding in 1947 on "St.
James Infirmary"; Bigard makes an engaging showcase out of "Tea for Two."
But even in these spotlight numbers, Armstrong is a vital presence: playing
a late-chorus counterpoint to Bigard, for instance, upping the energy toward
a big-finish finale.
And when not playing, Armstrong is also a driving force: shouting
encouragement to sidemen (some of it quite profane, in previously unreleased
tracks) and uttering other heartfelt expressions of joie de vivre. He also
directs the spectators from time to time: telling an enthusiastic Milano
paisan, "Don't sing louder than me, brother!" and addressing a terse (but
funny) "Shut up, boy" to a boisterous Town Hall patron.
Audience response to Armstrong's All Stars is at its most tumultuous in New
York's Lewisohn Stadium in the summer of 1956: While Edward R. Murrow's CBS
camera crew works through technical glitches between takes of the combo's
scheduled concert-arrangement performance of "St. Louis Blues" with an
88-piece symphony orchestra led by Leonard Bernstein, a large portion of the
21,000 spectators begin shouting "We want Louis,"
prompting Armstrong and his band to wow them with an unplanned "Basin Street
Blues."
Forty-six of the 97 tracks in this Mosaic box are marked "previously
unissued." Some earlier-released cuts, sonically amplified 50 or 60 years
ago, have had their dubbed-in applause removed. Certain performances once
presented as concert takes are now revealed to have been done in a studio.
Other selections made to seem then as if played before a large crowd were in
fact swung in front of a smaller audience. Mr. Riccardi's instructive notes
tell us what inventive steps were taken back in the day by producer George
Avakian not only to enhance the listener's experience but to evade
obstructive legal roadblocks set up by rival record companies and other
factions.
Whether played in an outdoor stadium or an indoor studio, there's a copious
amount on these Mosaic discs of truth, beauty, spontaneous joy and technical
prowess -- be it the fierce ensemble swing generated on "Royal Garden
Blues," the sweetness of "Faithful Hussar" (a European folk tune in which
Armstrong seems to scat sing in German) or the at-home party feel of
trombonist Trummy Young on "You Can Depend on Me." Armstrong's
upper-register notes -- a stunning array of high C's, D's, E-flats and even
an F -- are especially heart-piercing on the slow-drag "Back o' Town Blues,"
while his loose and winning way with a lyric is demonstrated through three
separate versions (at three different tempos) of "On the Sunny Side of the
Street." And not until Jimi Hendrix deconstructed the national anthem at
Woodstock a decade later would there be anything to rival the ripping,
impassioned, bravura "Star Spangled Banner" with which Armstrong caps the
All Stars' set at the Newport Jazz Festival of 1958.
As Teagarden drawls in appreciation on his first 1947 concert date with the
All Stars:
"I'm really in heaven tonight." Or as Louis shouts at the end of a raucous
1958 Newport
number: "Shake 'em on down!"
__________
Mr. Nolan is the author of "Artie Shaw, King of the Clarinet: His Life and
Times"
(Norton).
-30


-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

"I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
-- Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra

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