Louis Armstrong / Satchmo Plays King Oliver 180g

This sought-after soundroom demo, originally released by Classic Records, is better than ever, featuring 180-gram pressing by Quality Record Pressings. Featuring two classic cuts from one of the most classic jazz and audiophile titles of all time, Satchmo Plays King Oliver. Side one is “St. James Infirmary.” Side two is “I Ain’t Got Nobody.” Cut at 45 RPM.

One of the most important events in the history of jazz took place on a hot July afternoon in 1922. Twenty-two-year-old Louis Armstrong was playing in a parade with the Tuxedo Brass Band in his native New Orleans that afternoon when he received a telegram from the man who had been his mentor a few years earlier — Joe Oliver, the crusty, brilliant cornetist whose place in the jazz world of that day was implicit in the billing he always received, “King Oliver.”

The telegram asked young Louis to join Oliver’s celebrated Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, a band which was then generally accepted as the best jazz band in existence. Armstrong leapt at the opportunity, took off for Chicago immediately and for the next two years Louis and Oliver formed the most brilliant two-horn team the jazz world has ever heard.

Such a great album, as this one is, deserves the Analogue Productions reissue treatment. Remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog tape, the 180-gram super-silent pressing from Quality Record Pressings showcases the sound better than it’s ever been heard before.

This record is Louis’ tribute to the man who helped shape his trumpet style back in New Orleans and whose invitation to join his band in Chicago put him in the spotlight which has shone on him ever since.

Recorded at Radio Recorders Studio in Hollywood, Calif. over three days at the end of September and the beginning of October, 1959.