Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
Louis Armstrong
(Photo: Courtesy Dot Time Records)A new trove of previously unreleased Louis Armstrong recordings will see the light of day thanks to a licensing agreement between Dot Time Records and the Louis Armstrong Foundation, Inc. A total of four never-before-heard albums by the iconic trumpeter will be made available for the first time in CD, digital and vinyl formats.
Discovered among the archives of Queens College, which houses the Louis Armstrong Collection, the albums will join numerous other historical titles as part of Dot Time Records’ Legends Series.
Recorded in San Francisco in January 1950, the first album comes from a studio recording originally intended for broadcast on Musical Map of America, a radio show produced by the Standard Oil Company. The recording was episode 19, “Musical Story of New Orleans,” and featured Armstrong, trombonist Jack Teagarden and pianist Earl Hines. For reasons unknown, the radio show was never aired and Armstrong was given the acetate discs of the sessions.
Jerry Roche, who oversees the Legends Series for Dot Time, discovered the unreleased Armstrong recordings while browsing through the Louis Armstrong Collection’s archives. He recalls being “stunned” by what he found.
“When I heard this music by Louis Armstrong, I was totally overwhelmed,” said Roche. “Producing this music would mean people could connect again with the greatness of Louis Armstrong.”
Oscar Cohen, who was Louis Armstrong’s manager and is the sole and exclusive agent for the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc. and the estate of Louis Armstrong, underscored the importance of these recordings by pointing to the universal appeal of Armstrong’s music.
“Louis Armstrong is the most beloved and iconic artist of our time,” Cohen said. “His sound, his voice, his love—he forever touches the hearts of people everywhere.”
Lisa Cohen, vice president of Associated Booking Corporation and a board member of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc., amplified those statements, adding that the new recordings would enhance fans’ understanding of Armstrong’s melodious, highly emotional style.
“We are so happy to be working with Dot Time Records to bring more of Louis Armstrong’s beautiful recordings to the world, to hear the music and feel the love,” she said.
Future releases include recordings of concerts that date back to the 1950s and ’60s, including audio from a 1957 South American tour, which will be issued as a double-CD set. Some of the musicians that performed with Armstrong on these concerts were Teagarden, Hines, Cozy Cole, Edmond Hall and Trummy Young, among others.
The Legends Series, which was launched in 2015, also includes albums by Ella Fitzgerald (Live At Chautauqua Vol. 1) Gerry Mulligan (Live At The New School) and the Joe Bushkin Quartet (Live At The Embers 1952). DB
“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
Dec 12, 2024 1:58 AM
Cuban-American jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and Harlem’s Apollo Theater were among the honorees at the 2024…
“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 10:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
