Jazz Articles about Louis Armstrong

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Final Call to See "Pops" Making Records

by Fradley Garner
August 18, 2012

Final Call to See “Pops" Making Records September, 2012 is final call to catch Genius at Work: Louis Armstrong in the Recording Studio, the currently featured exhibit at the Louis Armstrong House and Museum in Corona, Queens, New York. “Records as well as photographs, scores and other artifacts reveal Armstrong hard at work recording his masterpieces," Jen Walden, a museum spokesperson tells me. “These treasures give you an inside look into what went on at the sessions, allowing ...

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Jazz Musicians with Eccentricities

by Chris May
April 1, 2012

Some of the 20th century's greatest eccentrics were jazz musicians. That is no surprise, given the link which psychologists long ago suggested exists between creative thinking and “abnormal" behavior, and which has been confirmed by recent neurological research locating both activities within the same area of the brain. Trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong's lifelong evangelizing of patent medicine laxatives is well known--the trumpeter famously had greetings cards made which showed him photographed sitting on the toilet, his pants ...

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Louis Armstrong: Satchmo - Ambassador of Jazz

by Chris May
February 28, 2012

Louis ArmstrongSatchmo: Ambassador Of JazzVerve/Universal2012 “You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played," trumpeter Miles Davis said. And while pianist Jelly Roll Morton may have claimed to have invented jazz, if any one artist could be said to have done that, it would be trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong. No one artist invented jazz, of course, but Armstrong's importance in its early development is supreme, ...

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Brian Harker: Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings

by Florence Wetzel
January 8, 2012

Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven RecordingsBrian HarkerSoftcover; 186 pagesISBN: 9780195388404Oxford University Press2011In 1925, Louis Armstrong was 24 years old. He had just returned to Chicago from New York City at the behest of his second wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, who wanted Armstrong back in the Windy City to play with her band. Armstrong had already appeared on numerous recordings, but now he was asked to ...

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Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong

by Chris May
November 26, 2010

Pops: A Life Of Louis ArmstrongTerry TeachoutPaper; 475 pagesISBN: 978-0-547-38637-9Mariner Books2010 The most unputdownable biography of trumpeter/vocalist Louis Armstrong to be written, by a country mile, Pops is also one of the best jazz biographies on the shelves. Modestly subtitled A Life Of Louis Armstrong rather than The Life Of..., this is the only book about Armstrong anyone but the hungriest devotee will ever need. First published ...

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Louis Armstrong: The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946)

by David Rickert
March 22, 2010

Louis Armstrong The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) Mosaic Records 2009

As far as recordings by trumpeter Louis Armstrong go, the Decca recordings don't generate much interest. Prior to them came the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, the most influential jazz recordings ever made and the template for everything that was to come. Afterward came the superb pop recordings for RCA, which showed a masterful entertainer more respected for ...

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Louis Armstrong: The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946)

by AAJ Staff
November 8, 2009

Louis Armstrong The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) Mosaic Records 2009

Presumably everyone knows that Louis Armstrong's greatest and most important work was done in the '20s with and around the time of the incredible Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions. During the Swing Era he led a big band and after the war returned to the small group format for the most of the rest of his career with his ...