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I can’t seem to copy and paste Ricky Riccardi’s Instagram post, so here’s the link instead: Louis Armstrong in NY 1924-25 Six CDs, shipping in August. Nice bookend to Archeophone’s forthcoming Louis in Chicago set. Full post from Ricky’s Facebook page: I promised breaking news on yesterday’s WKCR Louis Armstrong Birthday Broadcast and for those who missed it, here it is! Coming soon (in the next month), Mosaic Records will be putting out a six-CD boxed set of every track Louis Armstrong recorded in New York City between October 1924 and November 1925! Name ‘em, they’re there: Fletcher Henderson, Bessie Smith, Maggie Jones, Clarence Williams, Sidney Bechet, Ma Rainey, Lil Armstrong, Eva Taylor…the list goes on! I’m usually a big blabbermouth about the production of these sets, but I’ve been unusually tight-lipped about this one as the last Pops set I did for Mosaic had so many delays, I kept talking about it and years kept passing us by. Not this time—we’ve been working on it since September and it’s just about ready to go! We assembled a dream team for this one consisting of Scott Wenzel, David Sager, Doug Benson, and myself plus a network of some of the most respected 78 collectors on the planet. Doug did an incredible job with the sound restoration, David wrote a wonderful introductory essay, I contributed 30,000 words of track-by-track analysis, and Scott oversaw everything with a steady, encouraging hand. A pre-order link isn’t up yet but it will be ready any day now, and the set should be shipped in August. If you’re in New Orleans next month, I’ll be joining Scott and David for a panel about the making of the set at Satchmo Summerfest—will be fun! This is the third Armstrong set I’ve co-produced for Mosaic in the last 12 years and I don’t take it for granted for a second as I’ve been such a fan and supporter of the label since high school. This is the also their first set of public domain material and I think it’s going to be a harbinger of some exciting things to come in the years ahead. (And for my younger followers, it will not be in streaming or anything like that so invest in a CD player if you want to hear it!) More to come when it’s officially official but for now it’s official enough—plan accordingly! Pops is Tops! #louisarmstrong #mosaicrecords

A friend just spotted this post from Archeophone Records on Facebook: Today is another anniversary: 100 years since Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five recorded “The King of the Zulu’s,” “Big Fat Ma And Skinny Pa,” “Lonesome Blues,” and “Sweet Little Papa.” So we’re celebrating with a big announcement. Coming from Archeophone in Feb. 2027: a box set titled “Louis in Chicago, 1925-26: The Complete *Acoustic* Hot Five and Sideman Tracks.” Album notes by our fellow GRAMMY winner Ricky Riccardi. Stay tuned for more details!

Huzzah! 2022 Grammy winners ... can't find a way to embed the video clip via Facebook, but he thanked Dan Morgenstern, Loren Schoenberg, Robert O'Meally, Stanley Crouch, and George Avakian as inspirations and influences, and namechecked Scott Wenzel as well.

From 1929 to 1947 trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong, who had already made a series of seminal small-group recordings that would become a cornerstone of jazz history, rose to popular culture stardom, appearing in movies, becoming the first African-American to host a weekly radio program, and waxing a wealth of material for Decca and other labels that brought him greater commercial success, as well as critical controversy. I’ll be featuring music from those years on this edition of Night Lights, and we’ll also hear from Armstrong biographer Ricky Riccardi, whose recent book Heart Full Of Rhythm chronicles this key but often overlooked stretch of Armstrong’s career: Swing That Music: Louis Armstrong In The Big Band Era

Louis Armstrong was a legendary innovative trumpeter, a vocalist who had a profound impact on jazz singing, and a dynamic entertainer--and he got a chance to showcase all these aspects of his talent in 28 full-length films and several short features in which he appeared between 1931 and 1969. We'll celebrate Armstrong's birthday this weekend with a program that includes music from the films New Orleans, High Society, A Man Called Adam, The Five Pennies, and more, including the outtake "Ain't It the Truth" from Cabin in the Sky. You can also watch movie clips of Armstrong and Billie Holiday doing "Farewell to Storyville" as well as the Paris Blues battle scene with Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman on the "shows" page of the new Night Lights website. "Satchmo, Take Two" airs this evening on Armstrong's birthday at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It will also air tomorrow evening at 10 p.m. EST on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be available for online listening Monday morning on the new Night Lights "Shows" page. Next week: "The King at Midpoint: Benny Carter."

Published by Oxford University Press https://www.amazon.es/Heart-Full-Rhythm-Armstrong-English-ebook/dp/B08DYC3DT5/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=riccardi+ricky&qid=1601967043&sr=8-1 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/heart-full-of-rhythm-9780190914110?cc=us&lang=en&# Description Nearly 50 years after his death, Louis Armstrong remains one of the 20th century's most iconic figures. Popular fans still appreciate his later hits such as "Hello, Dolly!" and "What a Wonderful World," while in the jazz community, he remains venerated for his groundbreaking innovations in the 1920s. The achievements of Armstrong's middle years, however, possess some of the trumpeter's most scintillating and career-defining stories. But the story of this crucial time has never been told in depth — until now. Between 1929 and 1947, Armstrong transformed himself from a little-known trumpeter in Chicago to an internationally renowned pop star, setting in motion the innovations of the Swing Era and Bebop. He had a similar effect on the art of American pop singing, waxing some of his most identifiable hits such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "When You're Smiling." However as author Ricky Riccardi shows, this transformative era wasn't without its problems, from racist performance reviews and being held up at gunpoint by gangsters to struggling with an overworked embouchure and getting arrested for marijuana possession. Utilizing a prodigious amount of new research, Riccardi traces Armstrong's mid-career fall from grace and dramatic resurgence. Featuring never-before-published photographs and stories culled from Armstrong's personal archives, Heart Full of Rhythm tells the story of how the man called "Pops" became the first "King of Pop." Table of Contents Prologue - Bigger Than Jazz 1. "There's a New King" - March 1929 2. "If Louis Did It, It Must Be Right - April-December 1929 3. "I Break It Up Everywhere I Play" - December 1929-May 1930 4. "He Would Just Amaze You" - June-November 1930 5. "Just One of the Cats" - November 1930-May 1931 6. "I Done Got Northern-fied" - May-August 1931 7. "They Admit You with a Smile" - September-November 1931 8. "An Artist of Eminence" - December 1931-June 1932 9. "The Real Test is Entertainment" - July-November 1932 10. "Always a Way, Man" - November 1932-June 1933 11. "What the Hell is Wrong with Louis Armstrong?" - July 1933-June 1935 12. "A Much Improved Salesman" - June-December 1935 13. "Swing Is My Bread and Butter" - January-December 1936 14. "A Boom to the Colored Race" - January-June 1937 15. "Just Glad to See Us" - July 1937-May 1938 16. "A Solid Man for Comedy" - May 1938-December 1939 17. "He is Like the Armstrong of the Old Days" - January 1940-July 1941 18. "I Never Tried to Be God" - July 1941-July 1942 19. "A Little Higher on the Horse" - August 1942-December 1943 20. "A Great Deal Less Than Grown Up" - January-December 1944 21. "Why Should I Go Back?" - January 1945-December 1945 22. "We Really Did Romp" - January 1946-February 1947 23. "Ain't No Music Out of Date as Long as You Play It Perfect" - 1947 Epilogue - I Can't Give You Anything But Love

Mosaic has a Father's day sale until June 19th for two boxes by Armstrong and Hines. ("Pops" and "Fatha" - get it ) The Columbia and RCA Victor Live Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (#257, 9 CDs) now $129 (regularly $149) http://www.mosaicrecords.com/prodinfo.asp?number=257-MD-CD Classic Earl Hines Sessions 1928-1945 (#254, 7 CDs) now $99 (regularly $119) http://www.mosaicrecords.com/prodinfo.asp?number=254-MD-CD How do you like these sets?

This weekend's Night Lights Louis Armstrong program is up, featuring lots of music from Armstrong's 1947-57 period (including the bebopper parody of "The Whiffenpoof Song") and interviews with jazz writer Dan Morgenstern and historian Michael McGerr: It's All in the Game: Louis Armstrong, 1947-57 The program page also includes about half a dozen outtakes from my interviews with Dan and Michael, as well as a segment on Louis and Jack Teagarden that had to be removed from the final version of the program, and a slide show featuring several William Gottlieb photographs of Armstrong (as well as a revelation about the cover of the AMBASSADOR SATCH album ). A happy Fourth of July holiday weekend to all.