Satchmo - A Musical Autobiography [Box set]

Louis Armstrong | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 26, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Umvd Labels
• ASIN: B00005LAND
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,618 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars more than Louis', it's jazz autobiography.Superlative music., June 27, 2001

By 

JEAN-MARIE JUIF (BESANCON France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Satchmo - A Musical Autobiography (Audio CD)

Thinking that this sessions would never be released, I bought one year ago the Mosaic set including these recordings. Now,the miracle appears, at a lower price,and including all the sessions known as the marathon-like "musical autobiography" of Louis Armstrong.Louis (1900,or 1901- 1971) had already written some of jazz's most glorious pages before 1930. In the middle of the fifties, he had the opportunity to record all these tunes once again.The personnel is a little bit different of the classic "allstars" of the same years (see the W.C.Handy and the Fats Waller albums on Columbia) : Trummy Young, the great and little known Edmond Hall,George Barnes,Bob Haggart,Billy Kyle, Velma Middleton,Hilton Jefferson,Seldon Powell,Everett Barksdale,Sy Oliver,Lucky Thompson.The group plays all the hits Louis made in the twenties: "you rascal you","king of the zulus","dear old southland","cornet shop suey","potato head blues"(do you know the 1927 version of this theme,one of the craziest things ever done in music).There are also, of course,great vocals by Satch, and great vocals by Velma Middleton,a singer who has been so much despised by the "critics",these guys who never played a single note,but who know everything about music and art.And there is, for me, an absolute masterpiece: a version of "two deuces",a tune Louis originally did in 1929.A model of great trumpet playing,and of moderation.There is no unnecesserary note in this tune, only mastery and absolute control of the instrument. This way of playing is very close to another stylist and outstanding trumpet player, Doc Cheatham; and, also, maybe Buck Clayton,Bill Coleman and the immense Shorty Baker.Pardon me, I have derived from the subject, but if you like Louis,I urge you to discover Shorty in the Ellington band,Buck in his owns and Doc in any record he did during his 75 years of playing.Coming back to Satchmo's autobiography,this is,after the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of the twenties,a record set you have to buy in priority.But, if you don't have now the money for purchasing it, you can start with the two Columbia albums he did in 1954 and 1955:"Satch plays Fats",dedicated to the great Thomas "Fats" Waller,and the immense "plays W.C.Handy",mostly hanging around the blues.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Send this music to Iraq, August 14, 2005

By 

Alfonso Llana (Colombia, SouthAmerica) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Satchmo - A Musical Autobiography (Audio CD)

and they will love America.

What a fantastic music. Back in 1971 my father gave me this album (of course the old, LP, vinyl, monophonic records). It was love at first sight (well, ear). With the advent of CD's and all the digital formats I had forgotten this terrific album until, by chance, I came upon it in Amazon (now a magnificent 3CD set)

Sound quality is excellent and the set comes with a beautiful booklet. Printed information as an album companion is one great loss of the CD format so this nice booklet is certaily very welcome. My only "complaint" is that the CD's come packed in an atractive but very inconvenient cardboard sleeves which form a foldable album. The records are difficult to manipulate and soon scratches began to appear on my records so I put them in normal plastic boxes.

These records are the my 2005 discovery and I could not be happier.

4 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An embarrassment to Louis and those who claim to love him, February 13, 2004

By 

David Wilmot (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Satchmo - A Musical Autobiography (Audio CD)

Has anyone bothered to actually listen to this in the decades since it was issued? Louis dutifully reads the yowsah-yowsah dialogue that was written for him by an Englishman and plays beautifully when given the chance. Velma Middleton's vocals are horrible--she shows off her perfect diction with little regard for the emotional content or key (on "Trouble in Mind" she and the band sound at least a continent and a half step apart.) George Barnes' electric guitar on the Hot Fives is equally grotesque: did Milt Gabler or Bob Haggart owe him something? The modernist Charlie Christian, had he still been alive, would have made the same instrument fit in. Yank Lawson and the various All Stars are fine, and the big band arrangements are as good as or better than the originals. The set came out during the ascendancy of Mitch Miller at a rival label, and I'm thankful that it exists at all. But to accept it as a fair representation of Louis's career is to do him a great disservice.