If you love Pops like I do and want to keep his legacy alive, please consider making a charitable donation of ANY amount to the Louis Armstrong House Museum. It's very easy... just click this link: https://18190.blackbaudhosting.com/18...
Late in the summer of 1924, Louis Armstrong left King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago for New York City where he would join Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. Unlike King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Henderson's orchestra was known as a "dance orchestra", playing popular songs in a more straightforward and "polite" manner. Henderson however, noticed that Pop music was beginning to take more cues from Jazz, and the addition of Armstrong would give his popular dance orchestra just what he was looking for. Armstrong's contributions to Henderson's orchestra are critical in the development of Jazz AND Popular music. As you will hear, many of the arrangements as played by the orchestra are very straight forward and are by modern standards, quite rigid. Armstrong's uninhibited solo's (typically one chorus or less) are in stark contrast to both the rhythmically stiff ensemble playing of the orchestra as a whole and the often less syncopated and less creative solo's of some of his band mates. Here, in chronological order is every solo Armstrong recorded with Henderson's orchestra from 1924 to 1925. A very special "thank you" to Ricky Riccardi, without whom this project would not have been possible.