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Louis Armstrong Mosaic planned with his 1935-1946 Decca sides


J.A.W.

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Can anyone give an audio comparison between this set and the definitive records releases? I have the definitive, and if there isn't too much difference, I'd rather go for some of the other Mosaic sets I'm drooling over first (the bix/trumbauer/teagarden and the goodman).

The completist in me will likely scream out for the Armstrong eventually, but I have to prioritise here.

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Well, I think this sounds considerably better than the Definitive issues. I know you don't want to hear that.

This will be around for a while, you can get back to it.

Same here.

Me three--big difference IMO. BTW, if you have the 1940s Definitive 2-CD, everything there is on the new Mosaic, except for the two duets with Billie.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just listened up to disc 5, and I'm really happy with this set so far (although the Elder Eatmore sermons were a bit of a suprise). We've got cold rainy weather here at the moment and Louis makes everything warmer!

BTW, did anyone else cringe during the Pee Wee duets "Rockin Chair" and "Lazybones"?

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I had the pleasure of buying this at a record show last Saturday at the Mosaic table manned by Scott Wentzel. I've listened to the first three discs so far and I have to agree there is a significant improvement in sound over the Definitive issue.

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What's a"record show"? And Mosaic had a table? (Sorry if this is a really stupid question.)

Not a stupid question at all - Record show - someone hired a room at a Hilton somewhere in NJ off the Garden State Parkway (I couldn't tell you the town -it was just an exit number to me). This one was dedicated completely to jazz. A dozen or so dealers rent a table or two or three and sell their wares - anything from crates of 78's to cds. Mosaic had a table there, with stacks of their latest boxes, plus a group of the Selects, plus some partials. Scott was manning the table.

Edited by Pete B
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  • 6 months later...

would he have sounded better with Stan Kenton? You're not only missing a lot here, but you are misunderstanding the entire nature of African American entertainment -

which is, of course absurd and you seem to be missing my original and somewhat more modest point which was that it would have been interesting and possibly very productive if Armstrong had recorded with charts by the likes of Jimmy Mundy, Eddie Durham, Sy Oliver, gosh - maybe even Duke himself, Jerry Gray, Eddie Sauter and so on.....(yes - I know he recorded with Oliver later on). There's little in Louis' recorded output from this period that I haven't heard many times over (even Elder Eatmore) - probably more times than you've had hot dinners :w - and as far as I'm concerned they are mostly good, sometimes great performances by him - and I get it that Glaser and Kapp were marketing what they thought of as a a pop star. But Louis was also more than that and to say that the arrangements are not always top notch and equal to his talent hardly seems to me to amount to 'misunderstanding the entire nature of African American entertainment'

I trust you're not out on that slippery slope that resounds to the slogan "It's All Good" which we hear increasingly these days. Finally - to throw Kenton into the mix is, with respect, a bit pathetic.

For the past six months or so, I've been digging pretty much nothing but purebred vintage honky tonk, hillbilly boogie, western swing, old timey, bluegrass, pre-war blues of various stripes and so on.

But the Louis Mosaic - thanks Lon! - is a near daily pleasure, too.

After living with the set since release, and hammering it a lot lately, more than ever I thoroughly disagree with the gist of the above post - chosen as representing the meat of one aspect of this thread.

The idea that Armstrong would have been better served by arrangers, charts and so on "equal to his talent" - as if! - is enough to make me shudder. I adore this as it is - which is to say perfect, notwithstanding the odd bit of quirkiness and/or weirdness!

It's all "what if" stuff, of course, but putting the man is a supposedly more challenging setting - "equal to his talent"! - seems to me to be missing the point completely. In fact, such a mindset for mine would have likely have had just the opposite effect.

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Wow, what a debate! I skipped to the end after page 3, lol. Genug ist Genug!

Not taking sides, but I think Pops was a superb blues player - those minor thirds bent up about a quarter tone make the hairs stand up on the back of my head. Even though you know exactly what's coming.

Jim, nice quote: "Marsalis's ... dogmatic effluvia".

Edited by Shrdlu
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