Celebrating the relaunch of the seminal European
jazz
label
Storyville
(after it was bought from European music publisher
Music Sales Group
in early 2006), the company decided to release the first six albums in its Masters of Jazz series, one of which is a collection of work by
Louis Armstrong
. Most of the tracks (the first 14) come from a recording in Chicago during a 1962 session (with
Billy Kyle
,
Billy Cronk
Trummy Young
Joe Darensbourg
, and the great
Danny Barcelona
completing the band), which means that
Armstrong
is in full
pop
mode, and the songs included (
"The Bucket's Got a Hole in It,"
"La Vie en Rose,"
"High Society Calypso,"
"Mack the Knife"
) showcase that:
's distinctly scratchy voice takes up at least as much space as, if not more than, his trumpet. Similarly, the remaining six tracks, culled from performances and broadcasts in the 1940s and '60s, have that same radio-friendly smoothness, though the version of
"Way Down South in New Orleans"
included here, from an
NBC
broadcast at the
Winter Garden Theater
in New York in 1947 with
Bobby Hackett
Jack Teagarden
Ernie Caceres
Jack Lesberg
Dick Cary
Peanuts Hucko
, and
George Wettling
, is great and brassy and fun in that
Dixieland
kind of way. All the songs on
Storyville Louis Armstrong
are clearly performed by talented and professional players, but the poppiness of it will probably disappoint fans wanting to hear the rawness found in
Satchmo
's earlier horn work. ~ Marisa Brown