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Music Saturday, December 22, 2001Louis ArmstrongHot Fives And Sevens
   
EMusi.com just made Louis Armstong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens available on their site. I have wanted this 4 CD set for years. NPR Jazz
CD Review Trying to say something fresh about these recordings, arguably (though not very arguably) the most important set of recordings in the history of jazz, is a little like trying to make a new comment about the Mona Lisa or Bach's B Minor Mass. Miles Davis once famously said, "You can't play anything on the horn that Louis hasn't played...even modern," and these recordings bear out that statement. Listening to these four CD's, one after another, one hears nothing less than Louis Armstrong creating the very vocabulary of all the jazz improvisation that followed and making the soloist the dominant role in jazz rather than the ensemble. For anyone who loves jazz, hearing Armstrong in the process of doing this is an astonishing experience. As most jazz fans know, the Hot Fives and Hot
Sevens were not working groups. They were, in a fashion, the first "all-
star" groups assembled for recording purposes only. Among Armstrong's
colleagues on these dates were clarinetist Johnny Dodds and trombonist
Kid Ory, two of the greatest New Orleans players on their respective instruments;
but Armstrong's rhythmic conception (he virtually invented "swing" in
these sides), his endless series of melodic ideas, the golden vibrancy
of his tone put him into a whole different league. The NPR
Basic Jazz Record Library Hot
Fives and Sevens [BOX SET] Amazon.co.uk Review This is the same set of CDs as on EMusic.com. Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are jazz’s Holy Grail, a venerable guide for anyone with the desire to explore the roots of this now century old art. These recordings made between 1925 and 1929 ushered out the era of acoustic recording where the soloist played into a huge cone and ushered in the electric method utilizing microphones. But these weren’t Armstrong’s first recordings. He had begun recording in 1923 as a sideman in King Oliver’s Creole Band, with Fletcher Henderson and also with the blues singer Bessy Smith. It’s peculiar that Armstrong’s first recordings
as a leader; assembled here may be the height of his revolutionary esthetic.
It’s not that the next forty years were one farewell tour, it’s just that
Satchmo never stood the music world on its head like he did here. For
instance soloing, something we take for granted, just wasn’t done in Armstrong’s
Joe Oliver days. A typical band embellished a song, but Armstrong took
long solos, causing near riots of excitement. Obviously because of recording
lengths at the time, no extended solos are heard here. There are plenty
trumpet licks rendered to keep scholars and student busy for years. Armstrong,
true to his American heritage, made himself into a cult hero. Like Babe
Ruth’s Yankees, it wasn’t the Hot Fives, but Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives.
He also cultivated the art of jazz singing, introducing wordless ‘scatting’
to record listeners. When he opens “West End Blues” with a trumpet solo
followed by the klop-klop of cymbals and his “waa-waa-waa” scat in response
to Johnny Dodds’ clarinet one can imagine listeners falling-out with excitement.
Sure it’s now the 21st century, and next to nothing shocks and /or excites
you, but Satchmo’s wordless scatting is as fresh as yesterday’s software
start-up. Louis Armstrong Centennial: Riverdalian George Avakian Recalls the Great Jazzman George Avakian produced some of Satchmo's most
highly regarded recordings in the 1950s. But Avakian played another key
role in the career of Armstrong and many other legendary performers. It
was the young George Avakian who, as a student at Riverdale's Horace Mann
School, came up with what was then a revolutionary idea the reissue of
collections of the great music of the past.
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