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The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia & RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-66
by Skip Heller
Louis Armstrong officially returned to small band leadership May 17, 1947 via a triumphant concert at Town Hall that was less comeback than reaffirmation. It was even the dawn of his second great period, full of recordings that stood tall with his epochal 1920's output, and the subsequently-assembled Louis Armstrong and his All Stars would immediately establish themselves as a staple of the live jazz circuit as well as a powerhouse recording unit. That era--to the purposes of ...
read moreBarrett Deems: Deemus
by Nic Jones
Drummer Barrett Deems was a man with a pedigree, who took in stints with violinist Joe Venuti from 1937 to 1944, and a four-year run with trumpeter Louis Armstrong in the 1950s. The first years of the following decade found him keeping the musical company of trombonist Jack Teagarden. All of these affiliations are clues to the musical fare on Deemus, the drummer's first album under his own name--recorded in 1978 but not released by Delmark until 1997. It's great ...
read moreBarrett Deems: Groovin' Hard
by Derek Taylor
Confessional time: prior to this listening to this disc my knowledge of Deems was cursory in the extreme. Vague recollections of the man’s name conspired with the less than flattering photo that adorns the cover of this release and resulted in a luke warm anticipation of the music. Looks can definitely be deceiving however and one tour of this disc’s generous contents revealed the hard swinging jargon that has been Deems vernacular for nearly three-quarters of a century. Sadly this ...
read moreBarrett Deems Big Band: Groovin' Hard
by Jack Bowers
When all is said and done, Barrett Deems departed the same way he came in — Groovin’ Hard. The 84–year–old dynamo, who succumbed last September to pneumonia, made one last trip to the recording studio in January ’98 to prove that neither he nor his robust big band was combating the infirmities usually associated with advancing age. Prove it they do, as the band smokes effortlessly throughout while Deems, once labeled “the world’s fastest drummer,” shows he’d scarcely decelerated a ...
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