1. What A Wonderful World
2. Hello, Dolly!
3. Jeepers Creepers
4. Let's Fall In Love
5. When The Saints Go Marching In
6. I Love Jazz
7. West End Blues
8. Pretty Little Missy
9. Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
10. Potato Head Blues
11. Makin' Whoopee
12. Swing That Music
13. Cold Cold Heart
14. Stompin' At The Savoy
15. Someday You'll Be Sorry
16. Cabaret
17. Now You Has Jazz
18. We Have All The Time In The World
19. Dream A Little Dream Of Me
20.
Summertime
Imagine
you run a jazz station that appeals to jazz
fans and you decide to issue an album illustrating
the work of an important jazz musician like,
say, Louis Armstrong. How would you start
off the album? With one of Louis' stimulating
performances with his All Stars? Perhaps with
one of those superb duets he recorded with
Ella Fitzgerald? Or with one of the classic
early recordings from his Hot Five or Hot
Seven?
Well,
if you're the compiler of this CD, you start
with What a Wonderful World - a tune
that sounds like a nursery-rhyme song but
was hardly one of Louis's supreme jazz performances.
The compiler follows it with Hello, Dolly!
- another Armstrong hit but, again, not the
jazziest of tracks. So perhaps this album
isn't aimed at jazz devotees at all, although
they might well buy it and hope to find personnel
details listed. If so, they'll be disappointed
- because the sleeve-note gives only minimal
information.
Apart
from these grouses, the album supplies a fair
a cross-section of recordings by Armstrong
in a variety of contexts. There are several
tracks by the All Stars, and the Hot Five's
definitive West End Blues is also here.
There's Potato Head Blues, although
it's not the ground-breaking 1927 recording
but a later interpretation. And Now You
Has Jazz is not the original version with
Bing Crosby from the film High Society
but an All Stars performance which lacks the
excitement of the original. Thankfully there
are three glorious duets between Louis and
Ella Fitzgerald: two artists who seemed born
to perform together. The highlight of these
three is Stompin' at the Savoy, which
starts slowly but soon picks up into a joyful
romp.
Since
Louis was such a consummate performer, even
What a Wonderful World has its pleasures.
It exemplifies how everything Armstrong played
or sang was imbued with his jazz phrasing
- the conversational rhythms, small delays
at the start of phrases, subtle variations
in vocal tone and, of course, the concluding
"Oh, yeah..." which marks it with the Armstrong
trademark. Hello, Dolly! also has string
accompaniment but adds some jazz players and
Louis gets to do a trumpet solo. We Have
All the Time in the World - an Armstrong
vocal used on the soundtrack for a 1969 James
Bond movie - has the poignancy of knowing
that Louis didn't have all the time in the
world. Despite this compilation's shortcomings,
it could hardly fail because Louis Armstrong's
charisma and musicianship pervade every track.
Tony
Augarde
CD Reviews
Universal
8823823
