Satchmo! The Louis Armstrong Story 2001
Distributed by CBC Audio, P.O. Box 500, Station A, Toronto, Canada, M5W 1E6
Produced by Tom Anniko and Ross Porter
Director n/a
AUDIO CD, 3 hours
Sr. High - Adult
African American Studies, American Studies, Biography, Music, Popular Culture
Date Entered: 11/09/2018
Reviewed by Brad Eden, Ph.D., Head, Web and Digitization Services, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las VegasThis three-volume audio CD collection is a remembrance/celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth and the 30th anniversary of the death of Louis Armstrong. It is written and produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and the audio CDs are copies of the radio presentation. The CDs recount the life of Armstrong, his early years, his influence as a musician and African-American on American life of the early to mid-twentieth century, and contain a rich mix of interviews with celebrities and experts along with musical excerpts of Armstrong himself.
This audio collection is a wonderful biographical and musical presentation of the life of Louis Armstrong. There is no booklet describing the contents of the CDs, nor is there a listing of tracks. The user must listen to all 3 CDs in order to get some idea of what is contained in the collection. Because of this, it is difficult to use these extraordinary CDs for any type of teaching or demonstration in class. For aficionados of early jazz and of Armstrong himself, just having this audio collection may be enough; for others, however, the absence of a table of contents, a booklet, a listing of tracks, makes this resource basically useless in the educational environment.