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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Happy birthday, Pops!

August 4, 2014 by Terry Teachout

moneta-sleet-louis-armstrong-birthday-celebration-1970This is Louis Armstrong’s one hundred and thirteenth birthday, and he remains as central to American life and culture today as he was when he died in 1971.

I’ve long since said my piece about Satchmo, most recently in Satchmo at the Waldorf and most extensively in Pops, my 2009 biography, which ends like this:

Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born, he did not repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work. Therein lay the ultimate meaning of his epic journey from squalor to immortality: his sunlit, hopeful art, brought into being by the labor of a lifetime, spoke to all men in all conditions and helped make them whole.

257So instead of repeating myself for the umpteenth time, allow me instead to suggest that you spring for a copy of Mosaic Records’ The Columbia and RCA Victor Live Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars, a nine-CD box set of performances taped between 1947 and 1958. Contrary to what used to be the critical common wisdom, Armstrong was very near the peak of his powers in the late Forties and Fifties, the years when he gave up his big band and started fronting a small, hand-picked combo of wholly compatible sidemen. This set, in which he can be heard playing and singing in the company of such giants of jazz as Barney Bigard, Sid Catlett, Bobby Hackett, Edmond Hall, Billy Kyle, Jack Teagarden, and Trummy Young, is a gloriously festive collection of live recordings from that decade that will leave you in no possible doubt of his enduring greatness. It was assembled, and the superlative liner notes written, by Ricky Riccardi, the well-known Armstrong blogger and biographer, and if it doesn’t win him a Grammy Award, there is no justice in this world.

The Columbia and RCA Victor Live Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars costs $149. It’s worth twice that, at least.

P.S. The Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, which is normally closed on Mondays, is open today in honor of the occasion. If you’ve never made a pilgrimage to the great man’s home, you should hasten to do so. Go here to find out how to get there.

* * *

Louis Armstrong and the All Stars perform On the Sunny Side of the Street on CBS in 1958. This is my favorite film of Armstrong in performance:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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