They told me about Universal's plans for the set and wanted to use some photos and other treasures from the Archives. Dig it:īut I know, I know, those kinds of novelties only get you so far how about the music? Well, I can attest that the music choices are top notch because a) it's Louis and b) I helped select them! Quick backstory: last fall, the aforementioned Richard Havers and the great producer Bill Levenson came to the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College, where I'm the Archivist. They've even produced a YouTube video on the set, focusing on my home away from home, the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Pretty neat, eh? And Universal London (where the set is produced, but it will be available in the United States) is really going to give it the red carpet treatment, rolling it out at the Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans next month. It will also contain sheet music replicas of tunes associated with Pops as well as copies of some real treasures, such as Louis's trumpet part for the 1938 Chappie Willet arrangement of "Struttin' With Some Barbecue," the score for the original Gordon Jenkins "Blueberry Hill" and more. It will include a 200-page book by Richard Havers about Louis's life, featuring many, many rare photos. The set is simply titled "Satchmo" but there's nothing simple about it: it will encompass ten CDs and be housed in a collectable trumpet case. I wrote a very long set of liner notes to put the music in perspective and from the designs of the box that I have seen, it is going to be quite beautiful.īut Storyville tells me that that's not going to be released until sometime in the fall so I'll write more about that one when I get some more details For now, though, I want to dig deeper into a set that will be released in early August. One box is coming out from Denmark's Storyville label and it will be seven CDs and one DVD, completely focusing on the All Stars, with a batch of live performances, some previously issued, some not, spanning the years 1947 to 1967. You see, I've been working behind-the-scenes on two major Armstrong boxed sets that will be released in the coming months and both serve as essential listening if you're enjoying my book or if you enjoy Louis Armstrong period. However, I'm a big guy and this is a big book and if you're really going to have an appropriate CD package to go along with it, it might as well be a big box. My book has only been out for about three weeks but I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, "Rick, is there going to be a CD tie-in with the book?" I love the idea of a compact single disc to mirror some of the book's choice moments (which had been done by Verve with recent biographies of Dinah Washington and Dizzy Gillespie) but as of now, there are no plans for that.
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