Louis Armstrong - The Hot Fives & Sevens

Between 1925 and 1929, Louis Armstrong created one of the first great bodies of work in jazz. While he worked regularly as a soloist with big bands, he began his career as a leader with the first all-star studio group in jazz, the Hot Five. The other four musicians were Armstrong's wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, on piano; Johnny Dodds on clarinet; Kid Ory on trombone; and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo. The music's first great soloist, Armstrong was reshaping jazz by sheer improvisational magic, gradually diminishing the role of the traditional New Orleans ensemble with the clarion brilliance of his trumpet. Possessing an uncanny blend of exuberance and creativity, he combined virtuosic declarations with a talent for the subtlest shifts in phrasing and melodic variation, creating rich emotional statements that could hint at loss in the midst of joy or the promise of better things in the most sorrowful blues. The band expands here, to the Hot Seven and larger ensembles, and it gains soloists who applied Armstrong's lessons to their own instruments--musicians such as pianist Earl Hines and trombonist Jack Teagarden--but all come under the imprint of Armstrong's flowering genius, as both trumpeter and singer.

It's almost impossible to overrate this material. It may be the most influential music in jazz history, establishing standards for originality and sustained invention that have rarely been matched. The JSP set is a superb reissue of Armstrong's essential work. The remastering is by John R.T. Davies, widely acknowledged as the dean of engineers in the field of early jazz, and the resultant sound is simply the best this work has ever enjoyed. There are alternate takes of the later material on Columbia Legacy (including Louis in New York and St. Louis Blues), so collectors will want both. But this recording is superior listening, at a price that also makes it an ideal introduction to one of the few titans of jazz. --Stuart Broomer Amazon.com

On the JSP vs Columbia debate

As the review by Comic Online here - well worth consulting - reminds us: the historical importance and sheer delight of this music vastly outweighs issues of presentation. If you cue up, say, "Potato Head Blues" - and can spend more than a moment or two critically assessing the cleanliness of the bass frequencies before strutting around your living room like an umbrella man at the end of a New Orleans jazz funeral - I'm afraid you've lost the plot. But ironically, it's the very preciousness of this art that makes us all the more eager to see it framed as perfectly as possible. So the debate over editions must have its moment. But as we proceed, remember C.S. Lewis's observation in "The Great Divorce": the book lover so enamored of his first editions that he no longer enjoys reading has fallen victim to one of the subtlest traps.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton - in their authoritative "The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings" - give both the JSP and Columbia editions a rare fifth star, their highest accolade: "To our ears, while there are numerous differences along the way, both sets do a remarkable job on the material, and it's hard to see anyone being disappointed with either." Given that I don't have the Columbia discs for direct comparison, that's enough to reassure me that I'm not missing out on anything important musically. Columbia's booklet is said to be as superior as their corporate financial advantages could make it - but who ever reads those more than once or twice?

My philosophy of audio restoration leans toward the preservation of as much original ambience as possible - even at the cost of increased surface noise, for which I have perhaps a higher-than-average tolerance. Although this would - on the basis of Comic Online's description - seem to favor Columbia, the very high reputation of John R.T. Davies in general and this example of his work in particular satisfies me that the baby has not been parted from the bath water.

Finally, in a purely extra-musical consideration that may be of no importance to you at all: Which company would it would make you feel better to support with your purchase dollars? This small, labor-of-love outfit that undertook the project out of a sincere affection for the music? Or the multinational conglomerate who, in a spare moment from manufacturing PlayStations, figured it could wring a little extra income from a copyright that has been lazily exploited for many decades now? November 28, 2008

Rockin' the Hooverville

The stateside legality of this box set may be a bit dubious- this music is public domain in England, where copyright laws are a bit less stingy- but I don't think that you need to worry about federal agents kicking down your door. Like most import compilations of American pre-war music, these four discs live in a legal grey area here in the states, and it's a fairly light grey, at that. And there's hardly anything immoral about it: The people who created this music don't have much use for royalty payments, what with their being dead and all. In any case, purchasing this box set instead of the inferior and overpriced Sony package sends a good message to the big companies while providing monetary support to one of the greatest reissue labels in the history of mankind. Anyway, the fact that it's 2008 and you still pay for your music already makes you something akin to a saint.

But then again, maybe you should buy whichever set you're comfortable with. I'm not here to extol the virtues of JSP or denounce Sony. The purpose of this review is to praise Louis Armstrong's recordings with the Hot Five and the Hot Seven, and that's exactly what I intend to do. This is some of the most joyous music in the history of mankind, a freewheeling evocation of a lost world bursting at the seams with thrill and rebellion and sweat and booze and love and melody, with horns swirling and speaking and singing over and around each other while pianos twinkle drunkenly beneath. Without ever sounding dated, these recordings effortlessly evoke a magical world of fun-filled speakeasies, irreverent flapper girls. And boundless investment opportunities in Florida land. You need to get this. June 9, 2008

Is this the best available hot five and hot seven box?

Frankly, I don't know. I still have two hot five and hot seven audio tapes bought in the late 1980s (edition CBS masterpieces) and they also sound pretty good (and I didn't drink no gin... sorry for the lame "Monday Date" joke).
Basically, all I can say is, these cds sound great on my quite average cd player, confirming everything I have known about Armstrong before (and about Jimmy Dodds, Zutty Singleton, Baby Dodds, Kid Ory , Lonnie Johnson and others,
while I must admit I'm only starting to get (and enjoy) Earl Hines.

Aditional, non hot five and non hot seven tracks certainly augment my understanding of Satchmo and his golden era, with adittional thrill of Jack Teagarden, Eddie Lang or Hoagy Carmichael on some tracks.
Admittedly, discs 3 and 4 contain some (commercial) duds, but the amount of brilliant music in this box is amazing...
Just listen to the first, best or at least seminal versions of songs such as "Struttin' with some barbicue", "West End Blues", "Potato Head Blues", "S.O.L. Blues", "Fireworks", "Ain't Misbehavin", "Knockin' the Jug"; "St. James Infirmary"....

BTW, it is important to know that many songs that have the word "blues" in their title don't really belong to that category... Just as the term jazz in the 20s didn't mean the same thing it means today.

p.s.
In very informative liner notes we read about banjoist Mancy Carr, while the song listing gives his name as Cara; if I remember my CBS Jazz masterpieces liner notes correctly, "Cara" was an early misprint that snowballed into the future decades.

p.p.s.
The only real fault of this cd box- names of authors of the songs are sometimes listed in the liner notes, there's no complete list... Ofcourse, some songs are by Ory, some by Lil Hardin/Armstorng, some by King Oliver, some by Fats Waller, but it would be nice to have the data next to the song title. But, the performers (and date) listing is complete. May 28, 2008

LOVED the first 2 disks...

...though the 3rd was so-so and the 4th was barely listenable...the tunes degenerated from classic New Orleans jazz/blues/swing on the first two disks to big band pomposity and Lawrence-Welkish corniness by the 4th disk. Your mileage may vary of course if you actually enjoy the big-band style of Armstrong's later work.

The audio quality is fine, it's obviously not ideal but really for this type of music there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, you hear the occasional scratches, crackles and pops in between tracks but the good tunes still sound plenty good as far as I'm concerned.

Would much rather have an ok recording of brilliant music than a brilliant recording of crappy music! March 17, 2008

Don't touch the hiss!

If it was just the music I'm rating, it would of course get a million stars. However, the music is on a remastered CD. "Remastered" generally means getting your oldie jazz sounding as if it's being strangled in a can.
Granted the sound here is "clear" and the bass is a bit boosted. The acoustics, reverb, are however to an extent thrown out with the hiss.
Again, I've heard a lot worse than this. But generally, French jazz re-issues are better (though they can be a mixed bag). Why? Because they leave more hiss!! The catch? The French CD's are either expensive or they contain fewer songs for your money than these cheapo boxed sets.

Addition a few months later: have now had the chance to compare this remastering to that of other CDs (not the Hot 5s, other bands), and I confess this set is better done than many others. So if you're going for CD, I'd still recommend this one. (My own background is growing up listening to my dad's vinyl jazz LP's)
Listen to the sound clips of different CDs, let your ears be the judge. March 9, 2007

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