Louis Armstrong - Louis on Broadway '2023

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Hello, Dolly!
02. Cabaret (Single Version)
03. A Lot Of Livin' To Do
04. You're The Top
05. I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'
06. Have You Met Miss Jones?
07. Little Girl Blue (Stereo Version)
08. On The Sunny Side Of The Street
09. Sit Down, You're Rocking The Boat
10. Mack The Knife (Live At The Hollywood Bowl,1956)
11. Exactly Like You (1983 Satchmo Version)
12. I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues
13. A Woman Is A Sometime Thing
14. Summertime
15. How Long Has This Been Going On?
16. Bess You Is My Woman Now
17. Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)
18. That's For Me (Pt.1 & Pt.2)
19. You're Just In Love (Single Version)
20. You Are Woman I Am Man
21. Hey Look Me Over
22. I Still Get Jealous
23. So Long Dearie
24. Sunrise, Sunset
25. You'll Never Walk Alone


 moreBorn in 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Armstrong had a difficult
childhood. William Armstrong, his father, was a factory worker who abandoned the
family soon after the boy's birth. Armstrong was brought up by his mother, Mary
(Albert) Armstrong, and his maternal grandmother. He showed an early interest in
music, and a junk dealer for whom he worked as a grade-school student helped him
buy a cornet, which he taught himself to play. He dropped out of school at 11 to
join an informal group, but on December 31, 1912, he fired a gun during a New
Year's Eve celebration, and was sent to reform school. He studied music there
and played cornet and bugle in the school band, eventually becoming its leader.
He was released on June 16, 1914, and did manual labor while trying to establish
himself as a musician. He was taken under the wing of cornetist Joe "King"
Oliver, and when Oliver moved to Chicago in June 1918, Armstrong replaced him in
the Kid Ory Band. He moved to the Fate Marable band in the spring of 1919,
staying with Marable until the fall of 1921.

Armstrong moved to Chicago to join Oliver's band in August 1922 and made his
first recordings as a member of the group in the spring of 1923. He married
Lillian Harden, the pianist in the Oliver band, on February 5, 1924. (She was
the second of his four wives.) With her encouragement, he left Oliver and joined
Fletcher Henderson's band in New York, staying for a year and then going back to
Chicago in November 1925 to join the Dreamland Syncopators, his wife's group.
During this period, he switched from cornet to trumpet.

Armstrong had gained sufficient individual notice to make his recording debut as
a leader on November 12, 1925. Contracted to OKeh Records, he began to make a
series of recordings with studio-only groups called the Hot Fives or the Hot
Sevens. For live dates, he appeared with the orchestras led by Erskine Tate and
Carroll Dickerson. The Hot Fives' recording of "Muskrat Ramble" gave Armstrong a
Top Ten hit in July 1926, the band for the track featuring Kid Ory on trombone,
Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lillian Harden Armstrong on piano, and Johnny St. Cyr
on banjo.

By February 1927, Armstrong was well-enough known to front his own group, Louis
Armstrong & His Stompers, at the Sunset Café in Chicago. (Armstrong did not
function as a bandleader in the usual sense, but instead typically lent his name
to established groups.) In April, he reached the charts with his first vocal
recording, "Big Butter and Egg Man," a duet with May Alix. He took a position as
star soloist in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago in
March 1928, later taking over as the band's frontman. "Hotter Than That" was in
the Top Ten in May 1928, followed in September by "West End Blues," which later
became one of the first recordings named to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Armstrong returned to New York with his band for an engagement at Connie's Inn
in Harlem in May 1929. He also began appearing in the orchestra of Hot
Chocolates, a Broadway revue, and was given a featured spot singing "Ain't
Misbehavin'." In September, his recording of that song entered the charts,
becoming a Top Ten hit.

Armstrong fronted the Luis Russell Orchestra for a tour of the South in February
1930, and in May went to Los Angeles, where he led a band at Sebastian's Cotton
Club for the next ten months. He made his film debut in Ex-Flame, released at
the end of 1931. By the start of 1932, he had switched from the "race"-oriented
OKeh label to its pop-oriented big sister Columbia, for which he recorded two
Top Five hits, "Chinatown, My Chinatown" and "You Can Depend on Me" before
scoring a number one hit with "All of Me" in March 1932; another Top Five hit,
"Love, You Funny Thing," hit the charts the same month. He returned to Chicago
in the spring of 1932 to front a band led by Zilner Randolph; the group toured
around the country. In July, Armstrong sailed to England for a tour. He spent
the next several years in Europe, his American career maintained by a series of
archival recordings, including the Top Ten hits "Sweethearts on Parade" (August
1932; recorded December 1930) and "Body and Soul" (October 1932; recorded
October 1930). His Top Ten version of "Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train," in the
charts in early 1933, was on Victor Records; when he returned to the U.S. in
1935, he signed to the recently formed Decca Records and quickly scored a
double-sided Top Ten hit, "I'm in the Mood for Love"/"You Are My Lucky Star."

Armstrong's new manager, Joe Glaser, organized a big band for him that had its
premiere in Indianapolis on July 1, 1935; for the next several years, he toured
regularly. He also took a series of small parts in motion pictures, beginning
with Pennies from Heaven in December 1936, and he continued to record for Decca,
resulting in the Top Ten hits "Public Melody Number One" (August 1937), "When
the Saints Go Marching In" (April 1939), and "You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You
Break My Heart)" (April 1946), the last a duet with Ella Fitzgerald. He returned
to Broadway in the short-lived musical Swingin' the Dream in November 1939.

With the decline of swing music in the post-World War II years, Armstrong broke
up his big band and put together a small group dubbed His All-Stars, which made
its debut in Los Angeles on August 13, 1947. He embarked on his first European
tour since 1935 in February 1948, and thereafter toured regularly around the
world. In June 1951 he reached the Top Ten of the LP charts with Satchmo at
Symphony Hall ("Satchmo" being his nickname), and he scored his first Top Ten
single in five years with "(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas" later in the year.
The single's B-side, and also a chart entry, was "A Kiss to Build a Dream On,"
sung by Armstrong in the film The Strip. In 1993, it gained renewed popularity
when it was used in the film Sleepless in Seattle.

Armstrong completed his contract with Decca in 1954, after which his manager
made the unusual decision not to sign him to another exclusive contract but
instead have him freelance for different labels. Satch Plays Fats, a tribute to
Fats Waller, became a Top Ten LP for Columbia in October 1955, and Verve Records
contracted Armstrong for a series of recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, beginning
with the chart LP Ella and Louis in 1956.

Armstrong continued to tour extensively, despite a heart attack in June 1959. In
1964, he scored a surprise hit with his recording of the title song from the
Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!, which reached number one in May, followed by a
gold-selling album of the same name. It won him a Grammy for best vocal
performance. This pop success was repeated internationally four years later with
"What a Wonderful World," which hit number one in the U.K. in April 1968. It did
not gain as much notice in the U.S. until 1987, when it was used in the film
Good Morning, Vietnam, after which it became a Top 40 hit. Armstrong was
featured in the 1969 film of Hello, Dolly!, performing the title song as a duet
with Barbra Streisand. He performed less frequently in the late '60s and early
'70s, and died of a heart ailment in 1971 at the age of 69. A year later, he was
honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

As an artist, Armstrong was embraced by two distinctly different audiences: jazz
fans who revered him for his early innovations as an instrumentalist but were
occasionally embarrassed by his lack of interest in later developments in jazz,
especially his willingness to serve as a light entertainer; and pop fans, who
delighted in his joyous performances, particularly as a vocalist, but were
largely unaware of his significance as a jazz musician. Given his popularity,
his long career, and the extensive label-jumping he did in his later years, as
well as the differing jazz and pop sides of his work, his recordings are
extensive and diverse, with parts of his catalog owned by numerous companies.
But many of his recorded performances are masterpieces, and none are less than
entertaining. © William Ruhlmann



Louis Armstrong - Louis on Broadway.rar - 541.9 MB

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