Search - Louis Armstrong :: The Hot Fives

It's no exaggeration to say that Louis Armstrong recreated jazz in his own image, taking a collectively improvised music and remaking it into one in which the virtuoso soloist dominated. He did it by sheer invention and musical superiority, and he did it in the midst of the finest polyphonic players that New Orleans music had produced. The beginnings of it can be heard in these 1925-26 recordings by the superb Hot Five, a band made up of clarinetist Johnny Dodds, trombonist Kid Ory, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, and banjoist Johnny St. Cyr. Armstrong was with the players he knew best, and the music is relaxed and lustrous, ranging from the beautiful cornet feature "Cornet Chop Suey" to the convivial "Gut Bucket Blues" and the first recording of Ory's "Muskrat Ramble." The summit of the New Orleans style and the dawn of the next phase in jazz, this is an essential CD for any jazz listener, not just for traditionalists. --Stuart Broomer