Pete Fountain has spent a lifetime playing and promoting Dixieland jazz, making it possible for people who otherwise have little awareness of it to cop a casual taste and enjoy the thrill of New Orleans polyphony.
Fountain's Best of Dixieland series includes reissues of his own work and that of
Al Hirt as well as a superb anthology of traditional jazz clarinetists.
Fountain's
Louis Armstrong volume focuses mainly on
Armstrong's live recordings from the '40s and '50s, with the 1927 "Weary Blues" and a 1936 "Mahogany Hall Stomp" thrown in for historical ballast. This is a nice little introduction to
Louis Armstrong. It features his trumpet, which is more than can be said for some compilations which fixate upon his twilight years as a beloved vocalist. This is a taste. This is only a taste. And there are hundreds more great
Louis Armstrong performances where these came from. ~ arwulf arwulf