George Avakian - The John McDonough Profile

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The point-of-departure for this belated posting on George Avakian and his contributions to Jazz can be summed up in the following statement by Jazz author and critic John McDonough: “The innovations Avakian brought or helped bring to the recording industry are so fundamental and taken for granted today that most people under the age of 70 would find it hard to imagine there was ever a time when they didn’t exist.”

The world of Jazz has witnessed many misfortunes during its first hundred years of its existence as is implied in Dizzy Gillespie’s answer to the question “Is Jazz serious music?” to which Diz replied: “A lot of people have died for this music. That’s serious.”

Yet, throughout most of its relatively brief existence, Jazz has been immensely fortunate, too, in that a recorded history of the music has been left behind for current and future generations to appreciate and explore.

Of course the music and its makers are the most significant aspects of this audio documentation, but what’s often overlooked are the people working behind-the-scenes who were responsible for making these singularly important recordings happen in the first place. 

Orrin Keepnews in his The View from Within, Jazz Writings, 1948-1987 describes such a person this way:

“Let us consider the least understood figure on the jazz recording scene—even though his function is unquestionably one of the most important. He is known by a variety of titles, of which the most common (and perhaps the most confusing) is a&r man, a set of initials that means "artist and repertoire," which in turn means nothing much to most people.

As it happens, I know a good deal about this subject, having by now functioned in this particular capacity for more than a decade. For this very reason, however, it is quite easy for me to understand why this is an area of more than a little mystery and confusion. I won't really go so far as to say that even I don't always know exactly what an a&r man is supposed to be up to—but there are moments . . .

To put the problem into a specific setting: if the average jazz fan were to visit an average recording session (for present purposes, I allow myself the thoroughly unlikely assumption that either of these "average" items exist), he'd have little difficulty identifying practically everyone present.

In the high-ceilinged, microphone- and wire-cluttered recording studio would be anywhere from a handful of persons to a small crowd. There would be musicians, some of whom he would recognize because he had seen their faces in clubs or on album covers. Others on hand could be deduced on a simple functional basis (the man playing the drums is a drummer; the one in the control room fussing with a multitude of dials is likely to be the recording engineer, etc.). Even the few who might plainly be doing nothing at all

would therefore be identifiable as friends of the musicians, or maybe as the star performer's manager.

But one participant would undoubtedly defy analysis or categorizing: a man scurrying from control room to studio and back again, with something to say to practically everyone, and later perched in the control room listening intently while the music is being recorded and then out in the studio listening intently while it's played back over the loud-speakers there—but probably talking to someone most of that time, too; a man whose reactions vary from anguish to pleasure (and back again); a man who seems to be overseeing everything from the ordering of sandwiches to the sequence of solos. ... In short, this man is clearly a person in some position of authority but one whose precise function would appear virtually impossible to determine.

For me to call this mysterious creature the key figure at this "average" recording session would seem immodest, but to be honest this is exactly what I must do. Not the most important figure, mind you; that role does have to be reserved for the soloist, leader, group, or singer whose performance will be what the record produced here is all about. But the key—the glue, the guide, the catalytic agent, often the instigator of the whole thing and usually the one who, at the end, puts it into suitable shape for presentation to the world. Something like father, mother, foreman, and scoutmaster all in one. Small wonder that it's difficult for anyone (including myself) to define the nature or spell out the details of the job.

To underline the importance (for better or worse) of this key man, let me pause for a moment to reflect that, in our time, jazz records have been coming into existence at an overwhelming rate. Clearly the phonograph record has become far and away the main method of disseminating jazz. Even in a city that offers virtually no in-person jazz, one can stay home and hear a dozen or more groups in a single evening, thanks to records.

And just about all those records exist because of the decisions and production activities of those men described as, among other things, "a&r."”

The following tribute to one of the most important producers in the history of Jazz recordings appeared in the December 4, 2017 Obituary section of Down Beat [originally published in the magazine’s October 2000 issue].

© Copyright ® Down Beat/John McDonough, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

George Avakian, the Grammy-winning jazz producer and NEA Jazz Master who worked with some of the genre’s most important artists and brought numerous innovations to the music industry, died Nov. 22 in Manhattan. He was 98.

In honor of his passing, we present John McDonough’s profile of Avakian that ran in the Down Beat October 2000 issue, when Avakian received the magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

George Avakian: Record Innovator

“In recognizing George Avakian as recipient of the Down Beat Lifetime Achievement Award—counterpart to the Hall of Fame created in 1981 to recognize the contributions and influences of those without whom the history of jazz would likely be diminished or perhaps even nonexistent—the award comes full circle. The first recipient was John Hammond, the legendary talent guru and producer at Columbia Records who not only set an extremely high bar of achievement for all future recipients, but also served as a kind of mentor to Avakian in his early work for Columbia in 1940.

The innovations Avakian brought or helped bring to the recording industry are so fundamental and taken for granted today that most people under the age of 70 would find it hard to imagine there was ever a time when they didn’t exist. At least five are pre-eminent.

One: He was producer of the first jazz album in the history of the industry, meaning a series of sessions recorded with the specific intent of issuing them together and not as singles. The album, Chicago Jazz (Decca 121), reunited Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell and others from the late-’20s Chicago scene and was released in March 1940. Other sets celebrating New Orleans and New York followed.

Two: He organized and launched the “Hot Jazz Classics” line for Columbia, the industry’s first regular series of reissue albums accompanied by notations explaining the history and importance of the material. The series began in 1940, took a wartime hiatus, then continued up to the introduction of the LP.

Three: He helped to establish the long-playing record as the most important single innovation of the record industry during the 20th century and Columbia as the dominant label in its first decade. He planned the first 100 10-inch pop LPs released in the wake of the microgroove introduction in June 1948. He was also a key figure in the breakthrough of the 12-inch LP from a primarily classical medium (“Masterworks”) to a popular record (the Columbia GL, or “gray label,” 500 series).

Four: Under Avakian’s lead, Columbia became the first major label to enter the field of live pop and jazz recording, at a time when only smaller specialty labels such as Norman Granz’s Clef were doing it. Inspired by the success of the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert and broadcast LPs, Avakian recorded Harry James, Lionel Hampton and others in ballroom settings and Louis Armstrong on tour in Europe in 1955, all of which led to the precedent-shattering series of four albums covering the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival.

Five: He revitalized the careers of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington by taking what they could do best and wrapping it in the synergism of the concept album (Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, Ellington At Newport).

Avakian was born in 1919 in Armavir, Russia, to Armenian parents. He attended Yale University, where in 1937–’38 he came to meet the early jazz scholar/collector and Down Beat columnist Marshall Stearns, who was then working on his Ph.D. in English literature. In those days the records of the early masters of jazz were for practical purposes out of print and unobtainable, except for a trickle of single 78s that began to appear in 1935–’36. Bix Beiderbecke and Bessie Smith each had been the focus of a “memorial album,” but the concept of regular album-length reissues had yet to be invented. Mostly the music survived in the hands of a few pioneering collectors, one of whom was Stearns. His closet contained one of the most complete jazz collections in America. (It later became the cornerstone of the collection at the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.)

Avakian immediately became part of a small group that would come to his apartment every Friday and listen to early records by Armstrong, Ellington, Smith, Beiderbecke, the “Chicagoans” and more. Avakian formed his mature tastes here, and the experience would quickly bring him to record Chicago Jazz, a packet of six 78-rpm records for Decca, and soon after, launch the “Hot Jazz Classics” albums at Columbia, all done while still at Yale.

“When I saw how much alcohol Eddie Condon and his guys drank and abused their health,” Avakian said, “I was very alarmed and became convinced they couldn’t possibly live much longer. So I persuaded Jack Kapp at Decca to let me produce a series of reunions to document this music before it was too late. They were only in their mid-30s. But I was 20. What did I know about drinking?”

When Life magazine ran a major article in August 1938 about the history and roots of swing, Ted Wallerstein, soon to become the first president of Columbia Records under its new parent CBS, had an idea: Why not reissue some of the records referred to in the Life story? Wallerstein moved to Columbia in late 1938, and he asked Hammond to undertake the job. Hammond was too busy, but recommended Avakian. A meeting was arranged in February 1940 in which Wallerstein outlined his idea and asked Avakian to research the masters and assemble a series of 78-rpm albums for $25 a week in pay. Thus, the 20-year-old Avakian became the first “authoritative” person to review the short history of jazz up to 1940 and nominate a fundamental canon of indispensable classics that could be heard by a wide audience. His selections included the Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens, the now familiar Beiderbecke and Smith classics, and basic Fletcher Henderson and Ellington collections. In the process, he also became the first producer to discover and issue unreleased alternate takes. His choices would prove immutable, as they would influence the basic writing about jazz at a critical time when the music was beginning to be seriously written about.

In 1951, Avakian expanded these albums to the LP format to create the famous four-volume Louis Armstrong Story and other LPs. Once in general circulation, they would remain in print until the advent of the CD and have immense impact for generations to come as new listeners came to jazz.

After the war, in 1946, Avakian accepted Wallerstein’s invitation to join the Columbia production staff. He would remain there until early 1958, during which time he achieved the milestones that continue to define his career—the Armstrong Plays Handy/Fats Waller sessions, Ellington At Newport in 1956, the Dave Brubeck quartet sessions with Paul Desmond, LPs by Buck Clayton, Eddie Condon, J.J. Johnson & Kai Winding, Erroll Garner, Mahalia Jackson, neo-trad projects by Wally Rose and Turk Murphy, and even the first Roswell Rudd with Eli’s Chosen Six.

And, of course, he signed Miles Davis, which also brought John Coltrane to Columbia in his prime. Davis’ working habits and bands had been inconsistent. If Columbia was to invest in Davis, he could not drift artistically or professionally. Davis observed how Avakian and Columbia had taken the Brubeck quartet from a relatively small career scale and launched it to international fame, and was eager to associate with Columbia. He frequently approached Avakian, who found reasons to politely delay a decision until he felt Davis was ready to move to the next level.

“He was under contract to Bob Weinstock at Prestige,” Avakian said. “Then one day in 1954 or ’55 Miles came up with an interesting idea. He said he could start recording for Columbia now, but that we would hold the masters until the Prestige contract ended in February 1957. Columbia would help arrange the kind of bookings that could support a stable group, then begin a publicity buildup about six months before the switch. The quintet’s first Columbia session was in October 1955. I consulted from the beginning with Weinstock, who was a realist all the way and totally cooperative. He understood that Miles was ready to move to Columbia. He also realized that he could profit not only by recording Miles in a consistent setting for the balance of the Prestige contract, but by taking advantage of Columbia’s publicity effort for the last six of seven months.”

In the summer of 1955, Avakian issued the first and perhaps the best LP sampler ever, I Like Jazz, a capsule jazz history, intelligently annotated, that sold for only $1 and served as a powerful marketing tool showcasing the Columbia catalog. As chief of Columbia’s pop album and international divisions and through a combination of influential reissues and new sessions, he made Columbia the most powerful force in jazz among the majors.

By the fall of 1957, however, he left Columbia. “I had to get out of the headlong non-stop direction I was in,” he said. Avakian chose to accept the invitation of his friend Richard Bock and become partner in Bock’s Pacific Jazz Records, soon to be called World Pacific Records.

In 1959 he moved to Warner Bros., where two of his closest former Columbia colleagues, Jim Conkling and Hal Cook, were laying the foundations that would make the label a power in the industry. Conkling, president of Columbia during Avakian’s prime years there, had been offered a two-year contract to start a record label for the company. He brought with him Cook, who had built the first company-owned distribution system in the industry while at Columbia. Avakian joined Warner Bros. with a mandate to build a strong pop catalog for the new label, an assignment that cut his activity in jazz to virtually nothing, although he did manage to sign drummer Chico Hamilton. Conkling had looked to the Warner film division for potential pop talent, a strategy that led him to record actor Tab Hunter. Even before Avakian moved to WB, Conkling had asked him to produce Hunter’s initial Warner single, “Jealous Heart,” which became the label’s first charted single.

“The idea was to build an across-the-board album company,” Avakian recalls. Avakian signed the Everly Brothers out of Nashville and a Chicago accountant with a knack for comedy named Bob Newhart.

When Conkling’s contract was up in 1962, Avakian was offered the presidency of WB Records. But a desire to remain close to production and as far away from Los Angeles as possible led him to accept a position at RCA Victor, where he was brought in to improve the company’s sagging pop album sales.

Avakian found few jazz artists available to RCA. He approached the Modern Jazz Quartet, but it was not available. Nor were Granz’s strongest artists—Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson. Count Basie had been signed to Roulette, and Avakian’s Columbia artists were not available—with one exception. Desmond was still with the Brubeck quartet but a free agent for recording purposes. Avakian signed him and turned out a series of extraordinary albums. He also turned to trumpeter Al Hirt, a solid if commercial name on the edge of the jazz world.

Then came Sonny Rollins.

“Sonny seemed different from many jazz musicians of the era,” Avakian says. “He was very serious and sort of mystic. But also a very intelligent person. If you’ve recorded some of the jazz people who didn’t have much in their heads, it wasn’t great fun. Also, Rollins had not been seriously exposed and seemed like a talent who was going to grow into more than he was even then. That made him my No. 1 target. I approached him during an engagement at the Jazz Gallery in the Village. Nesuhi Ertegun was also interested in Sonny, and he made some audition tapes of Rollins at the Gallery. But we were not competitors. He invited me to listen to them, and they were very useful to me in planning the first album, The Bridge. I still have them.”

Avakian signed Rollins, and the contract produced, among other things, The Bridge and a pairing of Rollins and Coleman Hawkins, which, Avakian says, “didn’t jell as I’d hoped. For Sonny, it was a gesture of reverence toward Hawk. For Hawkins, it was a matter of courtesy.”

By the end of 1963, Avakian decided he would never work for a large company again, and left recording almost entirely except for occasional associations with small jazz labels such as Chiaroscuro Records and independent productions for Columbia and Atlantic. He managed Charles Lloyd, and then Keith Jarrett, who joined Lloyd in February 1966 when the group played an East Third Avenue club called Slug’s, where Lee Morgan was later stabbed to death by his wife.

In recent years, he has responded to invitations from Columbia Legacy to return to reissues, but with an important difference: Now the reissues he produced and expanded (Armstrong Plays Handy) or to which he contributed annotations (Miles Davis And Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings) involve many of the classic sessions he initiated during Columbia’s golden age of the ’50s.

As Columbia’s one bona fide living-legend executive, Avakian’s knowledge of the company’s archives is as deep as it is detailed and personal. He personifies a glorious period in the first two decades of the company’s modern history and, along with Mitch Miller, stands as its most illustrious living contributor.

In his days at Columbia, the record business was still something of a cottage industry, which was both a curse and a blessing. The money may have been modest, but the opportunities to accomplish things within a relatively small company were great. Avakian attributes his financial security to the success of the Avakian Brothers rug business and the sale of his New York apartment. Today, he lives well with his family in Riverdale, New York, and at long last he is finding time to put the whole story down on paper. It should be a book to read.” 

—John McDonough

Miles Davis At Columbia Records - "How It All Began" - by George Avakian

© -  Steven A. Cerra - copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The following is from a time when support from recording companies along with coverage by the Jazz press could help bring national and international fame and fortune to a Jazz musician.

Obviously, that time in no more.

Of course, it helps to have a 'Miles Davis' as the focal point for such celebrity and providence.

“‘HEY GEORGE, SIGN ME UP.’

Miles’ supplication had turned into a virtual litany.

We had developed a casual friendship in the late forties. By the end of 1948, Miles had been a member of the Charlie Parker Quintet for nearly two years, and the exposure helped him make two major breakthroughs. At age 22, he had vaulted to third place in the trumpet category of Metronome magazine's annual jazz poll (the winner was his other mentor, Dizzy Gillespie), and the following spring he was invited to the first Paris Jazz Festival, which introduced Parker, Gillespie and other bebop pioneers to European fans.

Despite his close association with Parker, Miles had avoided drug addiction, but soon after his return from Paris (late May 1949), he got hooked on heroin. He had left Parker because he sensed that the time had come to go out on his own, but had been unable to find a suitable manager or booking agent. Miles' addiction became increasingly obvious, and by 1951, he was virtually out of work, although low-paying record dates were still a means of a fast payday. The following year was much the same as Miles disappeared more and more from the New York scene, seeking work where his problems were less widely known.

It was during this time that Miles began suggesting that I record him. I discouraged him as gently as I could, without bringing up his drug problem. After the second or third time, I had an answer which took care of things for a while: "We can't do it, Miles. I checked with the union and you're under contract to Prestige. Let's talk after you're available."

Things were slow in New York when Charlie Parker went to Los Angeles in 1952 and sent back reports of a growing audience for jazz in California. New York musicians began a westward trek. The following summer, Miles joined in but to no avail. He even experienced an unnerving deja vu. Just as Parker had propelled him to prominence in New York years ago. Miles found that Bird had taken under his wing a hitherto unknown trumpet player who had quickly become the talk of the California Jazz scene.

The precocious youngster was Chet Baker, who became a charter member of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet after Parker returned to New York. In a leap even more meteoric than Miles' rise in the 1948 Metronome poll, Chet would spring from obscurity to first place in the 1953 Down Beat trumpet poll. The ascendancy of Baker, who was obviously inspired by Miles himself, may have been the final push Miles needed to rid himself of his dependency.

In mid-1953, Miles went home to his parents' farm in Millstadt, Illinois, some fourteen miles south of East St. Louis. Inspired by the spartan training regimen of his pugilist idol, Sugar Ray Robinson (Miles himself was an excellent boxer), he disciplined himself mercilessly and came out of a "cold turkey" withdrawal a clean winner.

Recognizing the temptations of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Miles chose Detroit, a growing hotbed of up-and-coming young musicians, as more favorable to his resolution to stay drug-free. There, for five or six months, he got his chops back and returned to New York in early 1954, determined to regain his place on the scene. But club owners and booking agents had been burned too often.

Miles was at least able to sit in uptown and at Birdland on an occasional Monday night. I hadn't heard him in a year, but increasingly he began to sound like the Miles of old. A few months later, he resumed his "sign me up" routine. The idea was still pretty far-fetched, but I was reasonably sure that Miles had gotten straight. Encouraged, I checked again with the union. "But you've still got two-and-a-half years to go with Prestige," I told Miles. "I know," he said, "but I'm looking ahead." "Me too," I said. "Patience."

One day Miles said, "George, I've got the answer. Tell Bob Weinstock (Prestige was his one-man company) that you're going to sign me eventually, so why doesn't he let you record me now and hold the masters until the end of my contract? That way, you can have all the promotion ready and Weinstock will know that he can get a free ride right away on your advertising and publicity." Crazy idea, I thought. "Let me look into it," I said. Nobody was knocking down walls to book him. Even if he stayed clean, it might be years before Columbia could promote Miles sufficiently to overcome his reputation for unreliability.

I let the idea drift until I mentioned it to rny brother Aram, who had gotten to know Miles in Paris (Aram lived there from 1947 to 1952). "Do it," he said. "What can you lose?" What indeed? ... Miles backslides, goes to jail, overdoses... But on the positive side, he'd been clean for a year. What if he could get himself steady work with a permanent group instead of the hit-or-miss bookings by which he had survived?

Summer arrived. Aram and I went to the Newport Jazz Festival, which George Wein had started the year before. (I was a charter member of the board, so we had box seats and invitations to all the parties.) Miles was not scheduled to perform, but he was there. "How about it?" Miles asked. "Maybe soon," I said. "I've got some ideas, but we've got a long time. Stay cool."

The last night of the Festival was Sunday, July 17 (not the Fourth of July weekend as some books have it). George Wein filled in the time between the last two scheduled performers (Count Basie and the Dave Brubeck Quartet) with a short all-star set introduced by Duke Ellington, no less: Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Percy Heath and Connie Kay. (This was a frequent ploy at Newport; it gave George's crew twenty minutes to clear the main dressing room underneath the stage.] Miles joined them as a walk-on.

They opened with "Hackensack." Next came Monk's "'Round Midnight." Halfway through Miles' solo, Aram said to me, "Miles is right. Sign him — now. After tonight, everybody will know he's back." By the time they closed with "Now's The Time," I was on my way backstage.

Miles saw me and threw me a big grin. On Tuesday, we had lunch up the street from my office at Columbia with his friend Lee Kraft, who helped him now and then with music business matters, and Miles' lawyer, Harold Lovett, whose dapper exterior and cool demeanor cloaked a streak of practicality. To everyone's surprise, I brought up the new subject which had been percolating in my mind for weeks.

"Before we talk about a contract and an agreement with Prestige, let's look at what's got to happen if this idea is going to work for Miles and Columbia — and Prestige as well, because we need Weinstock's cooperation. Miles, you've never had an agent who's done more than get you a few gigs, whenever, wherever and with whoever was available. Your sound is unique, but your bands always sound different. What you need first now is a group that you can hold together."

Miles jumped right in. "I've got the guys right now," he said. He had just opened the week before at a new Greenwich Village club, the Cafe Bohemia, with an unusually cohesive crew: Sonny Rollins, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones.

"But you can't hold them without an agent who'll stick with you," I continued. "Jack Whittemore at Shaw Artists has done more for you than anyone else. I'm ready to tell him that if this deal works with Prestige, he can count on Columbia backing you a year and a half from now with a strong advertising and promotion campaign.

Meanwhile, Weinstock will be pushing to cash in on your new group before Columbia can step in, which will help Jack keep you working." Long before the waiter brought two Nesselrode desserts and four forks, we had a working plan, including the terms for a Columbia contract.

Next, I outlined the plan to Jack Whittemore and Bob Messinger, his assistant at the agency. They knew what had happened with Dave Brubeck's bookings when Dave switched to Columbia from a small company he had started himself [Fantasy Records]. "A year and a half is a longtime," mused Jack. "But I think Miles will do everything he can to make it work," I said. "Yes, I believe he will," said Jack. "And so will we."

Years later, reports were published that I'd run into some snags: "Davis was too demanding and Prestige was uncooperative." Nothing could be further from the truth. Equally inaccurate was a statement that Miles recorded for Columbia before we got permission from Prestige. (As I write this, I'm looking at a copy of the contract which Miles signed before that first session, forty-four years ago. Attached to it is Prestige's signed release agreement.)

I asked Miles how much advance against royalty he wanted; he would have signed for no advance if Lee, Harold and I had let him. Miles, aware that I was sticking my neck out in unprecedented fashion, said $2,000, which was not unreasonable. Added to his session payments, this came to a guarantee of about $4,000 for each year including options; an excellent deal for him under the circumstances. (In his autobiography, Miles, a notorious "enlarger," adds "plus $300,000 every year" to the contract, a number which may have been part of a much later contract, perhaps in the 1970's.) What Miles and I both knew was that Columbia's promotional and distribution strength would produce substantial royalties. His first statement produced a happy surprise. When we could finally release his first Columbia album, it jumped off the presses so fast that he received a check, substantially over and above advances, and Miles promptly bought a gull-wing Mercedes two-seater, drove it straight from the showroom to 799 Seventh Avenue, and took me for a fast ride through Central Park and back. "I knew all along what could happen if you'd sign me."

As for Prestige, the stories that cropped up later about tough negotiations are completely wrong. Weinstock saw the upside of the proposal at once. He had no demands, and only two questions: "If I say no, Miles signs with Columbia anyway a year from February, right?" "Right." "And if I say no, Columbia can't start its promotion for months, right?" "Summer's no time to start anything, Bob. We'd wait till September." "I'd hate to lose seven months of Miles Davis ads I won't have to pay for," said Bob. "Where do I sign?"

Before the paperwork could start, Miles left town and promptly ran into a crisis. Sonny Rollins had spoken of relocating to Chicago, where he had built a strong personal following. When he got an offer he couldn't resist, Miles was ready with someone else: Cannonball Adderley, who had come up from Florida that summer and turned everybody upside down. But Cannon was also a schoolteacher, and he had a contract requiring him to return to teach in September. ("One for the books — never before in jazz," I thought when Miles told me that.) A week later, Miles called again. "I've got somebody. Come hear him Saturday night."

John Coltrane was a perfect second banana. He didn't have the flash of Sonny or Cannon, although he ripped off a searing solo on the last set. "I knew you'd like him," said Miles. "Tell Jack to book us back at the Bohemia and we'll be ready to record."

When the two sets of documents were signed, I took Columbia's publicity director, Deborah Ishlon, to the Bohemia. She had done a great job with the Brubeck Quartet, from the day Dave first came to New York. Debbie saw as well as heard Miles' potential at once. "With the Italian suits and Cole Porter with a mute, we'll get a full page in both Time and Newsweek,"she  said. "Slow  down, Debbie." I   said. "We've got till 1957."

The recording debut of the new Miles Davis Quintet took place on October 26, 1955 at Columbia's Studio D on Seventh Avenue, although the group's later albums for Prestige came out first because of the release date restriction. (Actually I did release part of a track by Miles before the Prestige contract expired; Prestige waived the restriction for a shortened version of Sweet Sue, Just You which was made expressly for inclusion in an LP of Leonard Bernstein's "What Is Jazz" TV script, adapted from a CBS-TV "Omnibus" broadcast. Bernstein used it as an example of "cool jazz"; I asked Teo Macero to write two different introductions, and the Quintet improvised two very different takes. Both are in this collection, of course - The Complete Miles Davis and John Coltrane on Columbia, 1955-1961, six CD boxed set [65833].)

On the same session (the Quintet's third for Columbia), Miles finally recorded 'Round Midnight, which I'd told him would be the title of our first LP in commemoration of the moment at Newport when Aram had urged me to go ahead with Miles' suggestion [‘Round About Midnight [Columbia CL 949]. He never explained why he kept putting it off, but we had plenty of time, so I didn't press him. Although neither Miles nor Gil Evans ever mentioned it, I'm convinced now that Miles had asked Gil to write the arrangement, and so anxious was he to make the recording definitive that Miles waited until the band had played it for almost a year. He brought no music to the studio, and the band knocked it off in one take.

It was no problem to select the most effective tracks from the three sessions I had recorded. They fell naturally into two well-balanced "sets," one for each side of the debut LP, with the emphasis on the ballad style Miles had developed so effectively. Whittemore's bookings, well-coordinated now, brought Miles back to New York frequently enough (the Bohemia virtually became his headquarters in that period) so that the Columbia sales people (led by Hal Cook and his merchandising manager, Stan Kavan) had a chance to learn all about Miles in advance.

With Miles getting pop-star treatment, everybody was a winner. Weinstock's decision to go along with Miles' oddball idea paid off handsomely for him — five LP's with the Quintet that Whittemore's bookings held together. For Columbia, when 'Round About Midnight came out on March 3,1957, it soon outsold the five combined. Even so, I had no immediate plans to add to the remaining tracks I had recorded; months before, I had recognized that Miles' second Columbia release would have to be something entirely different from the over-exposed quintet.

The story of why and how the idea of bringing Miles together with Gil and a large orchestra came about is told in the Miles Ahead CD annotation (CK 65121) and the 6-CD set, Miles Davis and Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (CXK 67397). Its release in the fall of 1957 eclipsed everything Miles had ever done and started him on his way as one of the biggest-selling jazz artists of all time.

After I left Columbia in 1958 and helped start a new company at Warner Bros.. Miles and I never worked together again, but our friendship endured. Miles, more of a showman than I had ever suspected, had created a bad-boy image of mystery and finally hostility (he started turning his back to the audience in California, even before the Bohemia), but no matter how many times he reinvented his public persona, the Miles I knew retained the foundation his conservative middle-class family had given him.

Years later, Miles and I fell into an unusual linkage after I became a Knight of Malta in 1984 (the citation reads, in part, "for a lifetime of service to American music"). As a member of that 900-year old brotherhood, I was invited to make a recommendation. Four years later, Miles was also knighted. His gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery, a few miles from my present home on the Hudson River, reads Sir Miles Davis. Facing it is an equally impressive stone which memorializes one Edward Kennedy Ellington.

Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars - Jazz Is Back In Grand Rapids - 2 LP ORG Music

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“On records, Armstrong produced between 1925 and 1932 a body of work which was a primer to a whole generation of musicians. In person, he emerged as the first band leader to be a complete artistic personality as well; he played, sang, and took an active part in floor and stage shows wherever he appeared.

He was the most daring, skillful and impassioned of all improvisers. They didn't use the expression then, but his "swung" more than anyone else; again and again an otherwise dull performance would flash to life when Louis blew a solo, even if for only eight bars.

As an innovator, he tossed off fresh ideas which — spread by his recordings — became the cliches; out of them grew still other bits of good music (often by Louis himself), which in turn again became familiar to everyone in jazz. Eventually the popular music business came to know the ideas that Louis had thought of first, although often without recognizing the source.

Louis developed a whole school of jazz singing, based on a literal interpretation of the folk and blues singers' approach to the voice as an instrument. Louis showed that the emotional meaning of a lyric can be expressed through vocal inflections and improvisations of a purely instrumental quality just as effectively — more so, in fact — as through words. This line of development paralleled the growth of his instrumental influence. It still embraces every jazz and popular singer today.”

• George Avakian, Jazz historian and record producer

The title of this feature is derived from the recent release on a double LP set of Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars - Jazz Is Back In Grand Rapids by G.B.H. Records which is a division of ORG Music [ORGM 2097]. We received our preview copy courtesy of Chris Estey at www.bigfreakmedia.com.

It is another example of how the current interest in vinyl, a revival in and of itself, has led to a revival or reissue of some of the more obscure recordings by significant Jazz artists - in this case - Louis Armstrong [1901-1971].

Of Louis’ importance, the late bandleader Artie Shaw once commented to an admirer of Pops:

“You are too young to know the impact Louis had in the 1920s. By the time you were old enough to appreciate Louis, you had been hearing those who derived from him. You cannot imagine how radical he was to all of us. Revolutionary. He defined not only how you play a trumpet solo but how you play a solo on any instrument. Had Louis Armstrong never lived, I suppose there would be a jazz, but it would be very different."

The double LP set consists of 15 tracks that were recorded in concert on the evening of March 26, 1956 at the Civic Center Auditorium in Grand Rapids, MI by what was to become Louis’ long-standing group through the remainder of the 1950s as made up of Trummy Young, trombone, Edmond Hall, clarinet, Billy Kyle, piano, Arvell Shaw, bass, Barrett Deems, drums and Vera Middleton, vocals.

As explained in the following essay by George Avakian, who would shortly become Louis’ producer at Columbia Records, Louis had just returned from a triumphant tour of Europe and was at the height of his popularity both at home and abroad. The essay is from Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff’s The Jazz Makers: Essays on the Greats of Jazz.

George passed away on November 22, 2017 and was memorialized by Downbeat in its February 2018 issue. Here’s an excerpt from his obituary as carried in the magazine:

“GEORGE AVAKIAN, THE GRAMMY-WINNING JAZZ PRODUCER AND

label executive who worked with some of the genre's most important artists and brought numerous innovations to the music industry, died Nov. 22 in Manhattan. He was 98.

George Avakian was known particularly for his production of Jazz and popular albums at Columbia Records, including the first regular series of reissues of jazz albums. In 1948, he helped establish the 33 l/3-rpm LP as the primary format for popular music. A short list of classic jazz recordings produced by Avakian includes Louis Armstrong’s Plays W. C. Handy (Columbia, 1954), Duke Ellington's Ellington At Newport (Columbia, 1956), Miles Davis and Gil Evans' Miles Ahead (Columbia, 1957), Benny Goodman’s In Moscow (RCA Victor, 1962) and Sonny Rollins' Our Man In Jazz, (RCA Victor, 1962-63). …

Avakian received a DownBeat Lifetime Achievement Award (2000) and Europe's prestigious jazz award, the Django d'Or (2006). In 2008, France bestowed on him the rank of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres, and in 2009 he received the Trustees Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences for contributions to the music industry worldwide. Avakian was a 2010 recipient of the A.B. Spellman NBA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy.”                                                              DB

Here’s George’s insightful essay on Pops, one that is particularly germane to the era of Louis’ music represented by the 1956 Grand Rapids, MI concert and recordings:

“It is entirely possible that the encyclopedias of the future will identify jazz simply as a semi-improvised music of the twentieth century, developed and popularized by American musicians, and perhaps they will say that in both respects the most noteworthy contributor and exponent was Louis Armstrong.

Similar telescopings and oversimplifications have taken place in the histories of other minor arts. Despite the expansions of jazz in the past fifteen years, Armstrong remains the most outstanding figure in its over-all development, and on a world-wide basis he is the most popular personality the field has ever known.

The scope of Armstrong's accomplishments is such that one chapter in this anthology cannot cover it properly. But a brief review of his contributions to jazz can serve as a reference, assessing the present position of this man, who, in his fifty-seventh year, has become the strongest single international symbol of jazz.

Louis Armstrong was born in the right time and place: in 1900 [this has since been corrected to 1901] in the tough uptown Negro section of New Orleans. In his childhood years he heard the musicians who were the first to play what our ears would recognize as the origins of jazz. Louis's friendly, outgoing personality as well as his semi-tutored playing brought him to a favored position under the wing of Joe "King" Oliver, greatest of the New Orleans cornetists of the World War I period. Poppa Joe eventually brought Louis to Chicago where, at the age of twenty-two, Armstrong embarked on the most fabulous career that any American musician has ever known.

Within two years, Louis was playing the most exciting, powerful and original solo style of jazz improvisation yet to be heard. His fellow musicians quickly recognized his ability, and even the public, in a limited way, realized that this was an extraordinary talent Louis's audience was confined at first to the Negro record public, primarily in the Northern cities (although he also enjoyed good sales in the South, but again mostly in the urban areas), and the habitues of the clubs where he worked in his first jobs. There was no other means of reaching and developing a following in those days.

On records, Armstrong produced between 1925 and 1932 a body of work which was a primer to a whole generation of musicians. In person, he emerged as the first band leader to be a complete artistic personality as well; he played, sang, and took an active part in floor and stage shows wherever he appeared.

He was the most daring, skillful and impassioned of all improvisers. They didn't use the expression then, but his "swung" more than anyone else; again and again an otherwise dull performance would flash to life when Louis blew a solo, even if for only eight bars.

As an innovator, he tossed off fresh ideas which — spread by his recordings — became the cliches; out of them grew still other bits of good music (often by Louis himself), which in turn again became familiar to everyone in jazz. Eventually the popular music business came to know the ideas that Louis had thought of first, although often without recognizing the source.

Louis developed a whole school of jazz singing, based on a literal interpretation of the folk and blues singers' approach to the voice as an instrument. Louis showed that the emotional meaning of a lyric can be expressed through vocal inflections and improvisations of a purely instrumental quality just as effectively — more so, in fact — as through words. This line of development paralleled the growth of his instrumental influence. It still embraces every jazz and popular singer today.

Sometimes the line is sharply, though incongruously, clear. About a year ago, a veteran Miami club singer who had achieved no particular success suddenly skyrocketed to a short-lived but intense television and nightery fame on the strength of a close (though twistedly exaggerated) imitation of the vocal of Louis's twenty-five-year-old recording of Lazy River. Even Elvis Presley fans might find it rewarding to compare their hero's Hound Dog to the way Louis sang Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train on a record of similar vintage.

Louis has never stopped working before the public since he left New Orleans, but his career has had its ups and downs, mostly as the music business itself has gone through various stages that have affected jazz musicians as a class. By the nineteen thirties, he had achieved a limited success in his own country — limited both by the boundaries of the jazz field and the prejudice against Negro performers which has always kept them out of the biggest and most lucrative jobs. His reputation in Europe, however, approached the phenomenal.

Phonograph records were responsible. The American companies had exchange agreements with European labels. However, except in England, the pop songs which formed the bulk of the American catalogues were almost worthless because of the language barrier. Louis, as a trumpet player of striking qualities and a singer who barely used language at all, was highly importable—all the more so because post World War I Europe welcomed things that were basic and things that were different. Jazz was certainly both, and it was also American, which made it admirable in the special, mixed way that America fascinated intellectual Europe in those years.

It was the European press that first took American jazz seriously, although some of the early appreciations were more enthusiastic than discerning. Unfettered by the heavy chaff of radio and the popular music business, Europeans heard the best of jazz through the releases of a record industry that chose its American-made releases with an ear for exciting instrumental music rather than the most popular songs. When Louis went to Europe for the first time in 1932, he found the most wildly enthusiastic acceptance that any American performer had ever experienced.

Yet in this same period, Louis found his American career sharply limited to a few pointedly "black and tan" night clubs, theatres (usually in the Negro districts of large cities), and one-night stands—mostly through the South. He had the first network radio show ever given to a Negro artist, but lack of sponsorship killed it quickly. It was apparent that all the commercial radio shows, as with all the best "location" jobs in hotels and top night clubs, would go to white artists. This is as basically true in 1957 as it was a generation ago, although the edges have been chipped in many places by singers like Nat Cole, Lena Home and Harry Belafonte.

The rising cost of "road" travel often trimmed Louis's accompanying band from thirteen to five in the early 'forties, but this proved ultimately to be the foundation of his greatest success. He went back to his roots and played in a sort of neo-Hot Five style, dusting off much of the old repertoire in the process. The quality of the sextet which he has since featured has varied greatly through the years, but his own playing and singing has maintained a high level, and the innate showmanship which developed gradually from his Chicago days blossomed to full proportion in the 'forties. Honed by an occasional appearance in a Hollywood musical, Louis soon became an entertainer who could have laid down his trumpet for keeps and still have made a good living. He is, within the limitations of his field, a great comedian, and he probably could have been a great actor. As it is, he plays in public a part which is based on his true personality, that of an enthusiastic, happy and elemental jolly-good-fellow, and he does it very well indeed.

Until recently, the American public has not given to Louis the idolatry that it has bestowed on others in the field of popular jazz. Actually, only two musicians before Louis have sustained an extremely high level of popularity for any length of time; both were white dance-band leaders, and one of them had so little to do with jazz that it is only politeness and the desire to set up a measuring stick that persuades one to mention him at all. (That, of course, is Glenn Miller, who was popular enough before he died, but whose posthumous fame was a unique phenomenon until James Dean piled up his sports car.) The other, Benny Goodman, never abandoned jazz, although sometimes the percentage of pay dirt dropped rather low.

Musicians recognized Louis as the master almost from the start; his coming to New York in 1924 to join Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom was the real beginning of his influence on his compatriots. When he finally began to make an impression on the great bulk of the American public, it was not so much as the most important single figure jazz has ever known; it was much more as the most lovable and amusing personality the field has produced. This did not, of course, prevent the people who presented him in the latter capacity from cloaking themselves in the role of honoring

Armstrong the musician while cashing in on Armstrong the entertainer. Nor should we scorn those who have done this; one has become part of the other, and Armstrong himself scarcely separates them.

In the period when "swing" became a household word, and Benny Goodman was catapulted to fame by leading a band which might have been described as "every man playing in the Armstrong style," Louis chugged along as he had before, leading a large band (usually on the road). The swing era touched Armstrong — the one person who had contributed most to what the public went for — only in that bookings were easier and better because of the increase of interest in his kind of music. The emphasis on his personality had not yet begun; Louis was far better known for his pyrotechnical skill as a trumpeter than for his singing, mugging and emceeing.

His development as a public personality did not actually start on a large scale until the 'forties. His motion-picture appearances presaged his acceptance by a wide public, and obviously it was the rubbery, chop-shaking comedy that had the greatest appeal to John Q. So it was that Louis was sharpening his God-given gift for reaching out to every last person in the house when suddenly the jazz revolution exploded, giving birth to bop and creating a cleavage that all but cut off the influence Armstrong had exerted since the middle 'twenties on every jazz musician who thereafter drew breath. The two events were not related, however.

In fact, in retrospect it seems surprising that Armstrong was so far removed from the thoughts of the revolutionaries who were, without realizing it, overthrowing his teachings of two decades. Perhaps it was because Louis was so much in the background of the swing era; he was acknowledged as the source of it all (if any one man could be called that), but otherwise he was little more than the leader of a second-flight band, getting along and occasionally being given a chance to work up his show-business personality in a movie or on an out-and-out commercial recording. (There was always some great trumpet blowing and fine singing on those records, nonetheless).

When Louis gave up his big band once and for all in 1947, he returned to the New Orleans format of three horns and three rhythm. This meant that he played more than before, but he also turned on the charm and built up the comic aspect of his personality. His vocal duets with Velma Middleton on That's My Desire and Baby, It's Cold Outside gave him a greater opportunity to expand his gift of comedy than he had ever enjoyed in the past, even with Bing Crosby on the Paramount lot. He had become a top concert and club attraction by the time he made his real bid for world fame in 1955.

The way was paved a year earlier by the proof that the Old Man was still the greatest when he recorded the "Armstrong Plays Handy" album. This was a miraculous blending of material and performer in which everything came out perfectly; it demonstrated for the first time in many years what a warm, ingratiating and communicative artist Louis was when he was presented in the proper way. It was a sensation among the American jazz fans, but in Europe it was a sensation with a still larger public; as in the pre-war period, the European companies were again releasing jazz as a sort of international currency, and the percentage of jazz sales in the total European record market had risen to new heights.

On the wings of this success on records, Armstrong went to Europe in the fall of 1955, just as he had done several times since his first triumphal trip, but this time a new excitement was in the air. Armstrong had finally become a major personality in Europe; an artist who did not have to be identified as the greatest jazz musician any more; he was known instantly by name in every level of European society. His triumph was complete when Felix Belair, a New York Times correspondent covering the four-power conference at Geneva that October, wrote a story about how much more Louis was accomplishing for world understanding (and sympathy to the United States) with his trumpet and gravel voice than all our diplomats put together. It landed on the front page of the Sunday Times.

At the same time, Ed Murrow was filming the tour for a special report on CBS television; it was shown in December, 1955, and Louis was made as a top commercial attraction in his homeland at last. (That TV film has since been expanded into a feature for theatres, and the expectation is that it will be the most internationally popular documentary ever made).

As always, there are bad things with the good when an artist gets into the big chips. Louis has long been content to sit in a comfortable groove. Musically, he has fallen into the easy way of repetition and has resisted changes in his repertoire to such a degree that except for Mack the Knife, which Turk Murphy generously arranged for him, Louis is playing the same program which has served him for at least five years. His solos have become rather fixed in content. Novelty instrumentals and vocals have become the basic keynote of Louis's show — and it has, indeed, come to be a routined show that the public sees wherever Louis performs.

The result has been a slick stage presentation which has won incredible acclaim for Louis throughout the world. A new debate has arisen as a result; is it a good thing or bad that people everywhere are being won over to the idea of "spontaneous American jazz," with all its beauties and excitement, through performances of a repetitive, set nature, freely laced with comedy?

I don't profess to know the answer, but the winning over seems to be impossible to achieve on such a large scale in any other way. Jazz of a more representative nature — in spirit as well as content - would certainly be far less successful than Louis has been in winning friends for the whole of American jazz. The more recent forays into the East by the big bands of Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman could scarcely be said to be more typical of jazz than Louis's group. The small ensemble alone is an argument in Louis's favor; reports indicate that Dizzy's tour show was, if anything, even more gimmicked than Louis's comic routines; Benny and his band are even more limited in scope than Louis and Dizzy. Jazz is a big subject.

A troupe of four contrasting groups would be able to cover most of its spectrum acceptably, but even the best possible one-night show would not do the job with anything near completeness, and it would have much less impact and success than Louis can accomplish by sheer force of personality and brilliance of showmanship.

Uninitiated audiences — domestic as well as foreign — find it easier to attach to one person, and have proven to be quite capable as well as eager to equate Louis with jazz; which is another way of saying that, like it or not, Louis Armstrong remains our best musical ambassador to the world. And I would go so far as to say, with Mr. Belair, that he is the best ambassador this country has ever had, Benjamin Franklin's celebrated success notwithstanding.

But let us look, for a moment, at the musical objections that have been raised as Louis achieved the most dangerous thing (in the eyes of some of his fellows) that anyone can achieve — success. On the subject of repetition, both as to repertoire and as to the content of his solos within that rather rigid repertoire, one must confess that this has become a standard practice in the jazz field. George Wein, proprietor of the Storyville nightclub in Boston and producer of the Newport Jazz Festival, sounded off with courageous clarity on this very point during one of the 1956 Festival panel discussions.

"It's far more prevalent than the public — and even musicians — realize," he said, "but as a night-club operator I know at first hand how many bands do exactly the same thing every night, down to the solos." Referring specifically to Dizzy Gillespie's recent engagement, Wein said, "If you heard his solos the first time, you'd have sworn they were completely spontaneous. But they were all worked out and repeated every night, down to the last little turn. I could tell without looking at my watch what time it was, because every night the tunes were played in the same order on every set."

Wein did point out, however, that there are some things which have become accepted standards in jazz, such as the King Oliver sole of three choruses in a row on Dippermouth Blues, or the still older Picou solo on High Society. Each is a model solo which has yet to be improved upon, so that from the point of view of quality as well as tradition, neither should be appreciably altered. The fine British trumpet player, Humphrey Lyttelton, concluded that "When Armstrong has achieved such perfectly constructed and powerfully expressive variation on Indiana and The Gypsy as those we heard at his concerts" (Lyttelton became keenly interested in this question of improvisation in the course of hearing twenty-two Armstrong concerts during Louis's 1956 tour — more hours of Louis on-stage than most of us have taken in a lifetime) "only a lunatic would suggest that, having achieved perfection, he should rub out and start again."

Another aspect of this matter, as Lyttelton also points out, is that of showmanship. Louis maintains — as do Gillespie and many other jazzmen — a rigorous standard for himself. He'll get up there for the high one in his patterned routine every time, no matter how beat the chops may be, rather than fake a chorus without it which also has a chance of being of lesser quality. "I'll bet," Lyttelton concludes, "that the lesson was learnt, not from any agent or manager, but from Joe Oliver and the other New Orleans masters."

There is a definite implication here that Louis has a primary interest in pleasing his audiences [entertaining them?]. No artist can make a living without doing that, but there are ways and other ways of accomplishing this necessary end. Certainly it would seem that after a few years of performing essentially the same program, Louis would feel that his fans would like to hear something else. Why, then, is it that year after year, his programs almost never change (including the solos, in many instances) — and yet his audiences increase?

The answer is so simple that few people seem to realize what it is. Louis just keeps reaching out to more people all the time. And unfortunately, most of the new fans are ignorant and undiscriminating.

Speaking for many of Louis's staunchest fans as well as myself, I would like to hear Louis do more "fresh" repertoire like Mack the Knife and West End Blues, both of which are becoming staples in his present concert repertoire, but were definitely not until the beginning of 1956. (The latter revival still appears only occasionally.) But until Louis feels a need to change repertoire, there is little reason to expect that this will happen. On the artistic level, Louis obviously prefers the comfortable, old-slippers feel of running through the same routines to having to work on new tunes. How long he can feel he is sharpening his talent "in depth" is something only he can answer.

Meanwhile only a small minority of his older fans and a few members of the trade press seem to be aware that the Old Master is opening every show with two full choruses of When It's Sleepy Time Down South, followed by Indiana, The Gypsy, and so on through Tin Roof Blues, Bucket's Got a Hole in It, and the various solo specialty numbers, including the inevitable same four songs with Velma Middleton. Only clarinetist Edmond Hall, a relatively recent entrant in the band, has shown real effort to vary his choruses, while Trummy Young and especially Billy Kyle continue to take the easy path behind Louis.

The changes will take place only when the cash customers stop turning out in droves to hear this same show. It is not likely to happen in Louis's lifetime. Meanwhile, jazz has benefited by this paradoxical situation, so it would seem best to accept anything Louis and anyone else can get for jazz in the way of broader appreciation, and if, along the way, greater sympathy to the country of its origin is generated, we are all the luckier and should be that much more grateful. It probably will be a long time before the United States will again have a Secretary of State of the intelligence and integrity of Dean Acheson, so it behooves us all to take delight in the accomplishments of Ambassador Satch.

In the long view of jazz history (if a history so brief can be termed long in any way), it would seem clear that any spread in the appreciation and even understanding of jazz has been on the basis of compromise. Today, everyone speaks of Benny Goodman as a potent force in popularizing jazz in the 'thirties. Yet I remember with uncomfortable clarity that in those years the jazz fans like myself — and certainly the public — regarded Benny primarily as a dance-band leader. True, he played "swing," and was considered acceptable on the fringe of the inner circle, but it was not merely semantics that persuaded us to reserve the word "jazz" for Duke Ellington and Muggsy Spanier and Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong — especially the out-of-print Armstrong on records.

But no matter. Every time the cause of jazz is advanced, in whatever guise, another deserving jazz musician gets a week's work. That's enough to satisfy this observer that Louis has done his job in making the world jazz-conscious, late in a career which has also included the almost-forgotten detail of having been the greatest internal influence for its own healthy development that jazz has ever known. Let audiences all over the world applaud Louis the great showman; our tight little crowd will be grateful that, whether they know it or not, they also honor Louis the great pioneer, Louis the great teacher, and Louis the great artist.”