Louis Armstrong: The Armstrong Box – review

Last summer, Universal Records and Sony BMG released Louis Armstrong's great recordings from the 1920s to the 1960s in a 10-disc collector's box. One of its highlights was a 1956 live show by the trumpeter with his postwar All Stars sextet – and that very significant but often-misrepresented group is the sole focus of this seven-CD set spanning the years from 1947 to 1967. (It also includes a DVD of 1958-59 TV clips, featuring such guests as George Shearing and Dizzy Gillespie.) The All Stars toured constantly for two decades of a still-effervescent Armstrong's middle-age, and did much to fuel the worldwide renaissance of traditional jazz after the second world war, and this set represents the gruelling schedule of small-town one-nighters and radio shows as well as glitzy concert gigs. Highlights include a well-recorded 1949 Hollywood live show featuring pianist Earl Hines, drummer Sid Catlett and the sublime trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden, and the hard-swinging later All Stars lineup caught at New York's Basin Street in 1956. There's inevitably a lot of hammy showmanship, the repertoire and the solos get repetitive, and Armstrong buff Ricky Riccardi's liner notes emit more heat than illumination. But the leader's trumpet variations on a huge repertoire of songs are consistently majestic, his singing irresistable, and his devoted commitment to his art and his audiences is plain throughout this absorbing collection.