Vocal jazz: The Great Summit: The Master Takes (full album) and “Hello, Dolly!” (two versions)

Louis Armstrong (trumpet, vocals), Duke Ellington (piano), Barney Bigard (clarinet), Trummy Young (trombone), Mort Herbert (double bass) and Danny Barcelona (drums) (1961).

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington had many things in common: they were born just two years apart, became leaders during the mid-1920s, still are two of the main stems of jazz and just about everything that’s ever happened in this music points towards them. However, no one could get them together in a recording studio until 1961, when record producer Bob Thiele organized and supervised two studio sessions at RCA Victor’s Studio One in Manhattan with a sextet combining Duke Ellington with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars to perform classic compositions by Ellington.

Armstrong plays the trumpet with authority and sings beautifully, and the group is rounded off by Barney Bigard on clarinet, Trummy Young on trombone, Mort Herbert on double bass and Danny Barcelona on drums. As a result Roulette Records released Duke Ellington & Louis Armstrong Together For The First Time with ten tracks and Duke Ellington & Louis Armstrong: The Great Reunion with seven. The music is outstanding and utterly essential, for this is one of the most intriguing confluences in all of recorded jazz. Much later, in 2001, the Blue Note label gathered all the material in the album The Great Summit: The Master Takes, please find it below. In late 1963 Armstrong received a call from his manager Joe Glaser to record with his band in New York, and although he didn’t like the repertoire he had prepared for him, he finally agreed. Among the pieces was a demonstration recording of “Hello, Dolly!” by Jerry Herman for the song’s publisher to use to promote the musical of the same name. Hello, Dolly! premiered in January 1964 in New York, becoming a major success, and the same month Kapp Records released Armstrong’s demo as a commercial single; please find it below.

Armstrong forgot about the song and continued touring, but after a few weeks the audience asked him to play it and the trumpeter didn’t know what they wanted. Members of his band reminded him what it was about and that the version they had recorded had come out on a single only a short time before. Armstrong began to play it in all his concerts and on television, and managed to unseat the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” from the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100, and reached also first place on the Billboard Easy Listening chart followed by a gold-selling album of the same name. Armstrong won the 1965 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Male as well, and played the song with Barbra Streisand in the acclaimed 1969 romantic musical comedy movie Hello, Dolly!, please find the sequence below.

Louis Armstrong (vocals, trumpet), Trummy Young (trombone), Billy Kyle (piano), Tony Gattuso (guitar, banjo), Arvell Shaw (double bass), Danny Barcelona (drums) and string section (1964). From the album Hello, Dolly! (1964).