Jazz Articles about Louis Armstrong

About Louis Armstrong

Radio & Podcasts

Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington & Lena Horn

by Joe Dimino
July 9, 2023

In honor of the 2022 book Dangerous Rhythms by New York Times best selling author T.J English, we constructed an hour of jazz celebrating the story of his intersection of the mob and the music. It starts in Chicago with the great King Oliver and ends in New York City with Jimmy Durante. In between, we touch on a story that was the root and force of jazz in the beginning. Featuring artists like Jelly Roll Morton, Bennie Moten, Earl ...

Radio & Podcasts

Bill Cunliffe, Doc Watkins & Louis Armstrong

by Joe Dimino
December 25, 2022

We begin our annual Christmas Hour of Neon Jazz with brilliant young composer Richard Williams and a song off his 2022 album Hollywood Christmas. Following that, we hear a live cut recorded by your trusty host at the historic Blue Room off 18 & Vine in Kansas City with pianist Charles Williams doing his best to honor the Peanuts gang. From there, we get into a host recent holiday albums including John Di Martino, Doc Watkins and the master of ...

Album Review

Louis Armstrong: Louis Wishes You A Cool Yule

Read "Louis Wishes You A Cool Yule" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 28, 2022

Plenty of jazz fans loathe “holiday" albums, defined as many of them are by cheap sentimentality and fake bonhomie. If the eggnog does not make you retch, the tackily jazzed-up Christmas carols will. But Louis Armstrong's Louis Wishes You A Cool Yule is an exception. Armstrong himself was exceptional. As Duke Ellington observed, “He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way." Consider something else... Armstrong smoked weed pretty much every day of ...

Book Review

Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld

by Richard J Salvucci
September 19, 2022

Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld T. J. English 420 Pages ISBN: # 978-0-06-303141-8 William Morrow 2022 The subtitle of this not uninteresting history by T.J. English could well be “Sex, Drugs, Jazz, and the Mob," because, for the most part, that is what you get. It is a flawed book, in part because there are errors of fact, some awfully florid prose, a few egregious typos, and more than a little magical ...

Book Review

The Best Musical Almost No One Ever Saw: The Real Ambassadors

by Richard J Salvucci
February 23, 2022

The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation Keith Hatschek 279 Pages ISBN:978-1-4698-3784-4 University Press of Mississippi 2022 In the late 1950s, Dave Brubeck and Iola Brubeck decided that it might be time for jazz to visit Broadway. Iola, in particular, felt strongly about doing a project that blended jazz as an art form and as a sociopolitical commentary on the absurdity of racial segregation. The Real ...

Building a Jazz Library

The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and Rca Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966

by Vic Albani
January 24, 2022

Allora, mettiamo tutti gli aggettivi all'inizio: spettacolare, tentacolare, perfetto, luccicante, esaustivo, infinito, entusiasmante. Potremmo andare avanti per un bel po' di righe ma sarebbe anche stupido anche perché parlare di qualcosa che interessa uno dei nomi che hanno inventato il jazz, per di più in uno dei suoi periodi migliori sia per produzione che per altezza qualitativa, è un po' come santificare la Croce Rossa. Parliamo e scriviamo di un lavoro largamente atteso e finalmente messo in ...

Extended Analysis

The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia & RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-66

by Skip Heller
May 28, 2021

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 ...