CD: Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong, Fleischmann's Yeast Show & Louis' Home-Recorded Tapes (Jazz Society). If Armstrong's big band of the late 1930s had been this supercharged on its commercial recordings, critics might not have written all those disparaging things about it. These air checks tell the real story of what Armstrong was capable of in fronting Luis Russell's band. Here is the fountainhead of jazz inspiration in full flight. The companion CD is a generous sampling of Louis reminiscing, singing, playing and joking into his home tape recorder. To hear him in the 1950s playing along, gloriously, with his 1922 recording of "Tears" is worth multiples of the price of this set.