Louis Armstrong’s favourite Louis Armstrong songs
The 20th century certainly had no shortage of iconic and groundbreaking musical artists. After all, it was the century that brought us the world of popular music as we know it, witnessing the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, free jazz, blues rock, and virtually every modern music genre you can think of. Out of all of those legendary names that came and went over the 20th century, few musicians enjoyed as long or as successful a career as the New Orleans-born trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
Jazz, as a musical style, has a much longer and more varied history than most genres. With origins dating as far back as the 18th century, the jazz scene in America has undergone countless changes, witnessing a plethora of utterly groundbreaking artists in the process. Charlie Parker, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davies, and Duke Ellington are all names that helped to completely redefine modern jazz music, but Louis Armstrong predated all of them. Beginning his musical career during the booming jazz scene of New Orleans in the 1910s, he remained a defining figure in jazz for upwards of five decades.
During his time in Chicago during the 1920s, Armstrong would prove instrumental in the development of modern jazz, placing an emphasis on solo performance rather than big band improvisation. As the decade progressed, Armstrong gained a reputation as the greatest trumpet player within the scene – a reputation which, for the most part, stuck with him until his death in 1971.
Throughout his long and illustrious career, Armstrong saw jazz shift focus multiple times, and he proved a consistent ability to move with the times, adapting himself to the emerging sounds within the genre. As you might expect, therefore, Armstrong’s discography is incredibly vast and varied. You could dedicate your entire existence to amassing every record put out by Armstrong, and you would likely still fall short by the time you reach old age. Luckily, Armstrong himself was once on hand to give a guide through his greatest compositions.
In 1968, the trumpeter appeared as a guest on the BBC’s long-running radio programme Desert Island Discs, selecting eight tracks – or “gramophone records”, as presenter Roy Plomley put it in the broadcast – that he wished to take with him to a deserted island. Usually, guests take the opportunity to espouse the joys of their own musical influences or songs that have been important to them throughout their life. Most guests, however, are not Louis Armstrong. Out of his eight selected tracks, five were songs he had recorded himself.
The favourite tracks Armstrong selected spanned across much of his career, encapsulating the essence of the jazz legend. During the interview portion of the programme, the musician explained some of his choices, none of which were particularly awash with modesty. On his second pick, ‘Mack the Knife’, he claimed, “Everybody in Harlem sings this when it comes on the nickel controller, the whole bar sings it word for word” – a claim which is difficult to verify, but then who would disagree with Louis Armstrong?
Elsewhere in the programme, Armstrong picked out two tracks, ‘Bess, You Is My Woman Now’ and ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’, which he recorded with fellow jazz legend Ella Fitzgerlad, so his choices were not wholly self-congratulatory. Either way, when you have a discography as vitally important as that of Armstrong, you can afford to throw any modesty out of the window.
