To be sure,
there were superlative jazz musicians before
the
cornetist-trumpeter-vocalist Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)
burst upon the scene
like brilliant fireworks on the Fourth of
July. But "Satchmo
the Great," among his numerous feats,
showed players that
they could stand on their own two feet
and taught singers to
swing. He is nothing less than the
headwaters of the
Mississippi River that is jazz and pop.
THE ESSENTIAL LOUIS
ARMSTRONG charts perhaps
the most joyously
thrilling of all courses in American
music. Here is the
genius that blazed in youth and kept
right on burning,
through maturity and into elder
statesmanhood. Here
is Armstrong as sideman, star, and
legend, beginning in
1925 as a key member of Fletcher
Henderson's
pathfinding orchestra, through his own
revolutionary Hot
Fives and Sevens, and to the big bands,
the All-Stars, and
culminating with 1967's
"What a
Wonderful World," a posthumous hit in 1988.
