Search - Louis Armstrong :: Best Of The Hot 5 & Hot 7

The Classics of jazz

Nikica Gilic | Zagreb, Croatia | 11/30/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm giving this budget-priced CD-box 5 stars because it contains some of the most important recordings in the entire history of jazz:

Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens; the foundation on which Armstrong's reputation stands - at least if you ask jazz fans... Satchmo, Johnny Dodds, Earl Hines, Zutty Singleton and company (including the magnificent guest Lonnie Johnson on guitar) create some wonderful stuff and additional tracks by same artists in different settings is thrown in to make the cake richer (although some gigs - accompanying inferior singer f.i. - are not very uplifting).



However, although I have listened to this music in various forms for years (first on audio-tapes bought in Canada by my friend's father who sailed big cargo-ships), I must warn buyers who are NOT big jazz fans:



the bulk of this recordings is from the 20s, so don't expect any high fidelity there! There's also some hiss that is toned down in another attempt to transfer this treasure to CD (The Hot Fives & Sevens)... That CD-box's page also has interesting discussions about different ways to transfer such old material.



Also, I'd like to warn jazz fans that this inexpensive box DOES NOT contain the precise listing of players and dates for each track - not a small fault by the distingue jazz-buff standards...

However, I already have that another (a bit more expensive) box of basically the same tracks, so I bought this one mostly to compare the remastering with this Columbia version...

The verdict? As someone has already said it - the remastering is DIFFERENT, but good in both cases.



At least on my inexpensive Hi-Fi equipment..."