Louis Armstrong: At Symphony Hall - Jazz Reference (CD)

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)

CD

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Label:: Dreyfus
Aufnahmejahr ca.:: 1947
UPC/EAN:: 3460503674622
Erscheinungstermin:: 23.1.2012

Early evening on a Sunday in autumn in Boston, a town brimming with history in north-east America. A long queue waiting before the venerable Symphony Hall, the temple of the Boston Symphony Orchestra of Koussevitsky, in Massachusetts Avenue. All seats for this concert held on 30 November 1947 had been sold since Thursday morning. As, tonight, the city was to witness a great event – its first concert, after the Civic Opera House in Chicago and New York’s Town Hall, of the king of jazz, Louis Armstrong’s brand new “All Stars”. Having spent a few days undergoing extensive examinations in a New York hospital in July – he had suffered for some time from polyps on his vocal cords – Louis launched a new orchestral formula on 13 August in Billy Berg’s, Los Angeles. After some fifteen years at the head of a big band, Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong had returned to a small group, quite similar to those which developed the ‘New Orleans’ style, named after his dear hometown. Surrounding him were champions of collective improvisation and great polyvalent soloists, Jack Teagarden, a Texan of Amerindian blood, virtuosic trombonist, familiar with the Louisiana style, a nonchalant vocalist, very inspired by Armstrong with whom he became a kind of ideal partner, and clarinettist Barney Bigard from the Crescent City, who was with Ellington from 1928 to 1942 without having lost an ounce of the style of his origins, a prodigiously fluid and smooth instrumentalist. The third big name in this new group was the tremendous Sidney ‘Big Sid’ Catlett, who had returned to Louis after a six year leave, a prince of swing, a powerful and innovating stylist – he was the drummer in the very first ‘bebop’ discs with Gillespie and Parker – and a soloist before all others. To complete the team were two regulars, the solid bassist Arvell Shaw, in place since 1944, and the imposing Velma Middleton, Satchmo’s truculent accomplice since 1942. On the piano, just for one year, was Dick Cary, a good disciple of the mighty Earl Hines who replaced him in 1948.

In this propitious context, Armstrong again found total freedom and came back to the flavours of a New Orleans repertory – Royal Garden Blues, Muskrat Ramble, High Society – without insisting on purity of style for so much, and enjoyed hearing his pals in tunes which had become jazz standards: Bigard in Tea For Two, Body And Soul and C Jam Blues, Teagarden in a splendid Stars Fell On Alabama, Sidney Catlett in Steak Face etc. However, it is above all Louis’ genius which enthrals us, his unparalleled sonority, his moving voice, his soul unveiled for all to see. Speaking of which, Black And Blue is an unforgettable moment which has thankfully been preserved by the recording.