The Complete Satchmo Plays King Oliver

In September-October 1959, the great Louis Armstrong recorded an album paying homage to his mentor and first employer, the legendary cornetist Joe "King" Oliver (1885-1938), this gave Louis and his All Stars the opportunity to explore tunes the trumpeter had never recorded before, and some others he had not played in decades. The LP, Satchmo Plays King Oliver (Audio-Fidelity AFSD-5930), was wonderfully recorded in stereo (a new technology at the time), providing us an amazing perspective of Armstrong's pure sound.

For this release, American Jazz Classics have put together all the songs recorded by Satch during the sessions, as well as all known alternate takes (on CD2). To fill out the set, they present seven additional King Oliver or Oliver-related tunes taped by Louis during the mid-fifties, as well as, in the few cases in which he had previously recorded them, Armstrong's original versions of tunes from the Audio Fidelity album, and his classic 1928 versions of King Oliver's "Weather Bird" and "West End Blues".