The Cleanest Recordings of 1920s Louis Armstrong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

On Youtube, jazz enthu­si­ast Jonathan Holmes declares: “I can guar­an­tee this is the clean­est sound­ing Louis Arm­strong record you’ll ever hear! With the orig­i­nal trans­fer sup­plied by Nick Del­low, here is the moth­er record which was shipped by Okeh to Ger­many for their Odeon press­ings. The sound is won­der­ful­ly imme­di­ate, and crys­tal clear.” No crack­le and pop. That’s how Holmes describes the pris­tine record­ing you can hear above of the Louis Arm­strong clas­sic, “Ain’t Mis­be­havin’.” Below, hear anoth­er “moth­er met­al” record­ing of anoth­er Arm­strong song, “Knee Drops.” Enjoy the ear­ly Satch­mo in all of its won­der­ful clar­i­ty.

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via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Hours of Ear­ly Jazz Record­ings Now Online: Archive Fea­tures Louis Arm­strong, Duke Elling­ton & Much More

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan


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Comments (8)
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  • Joel House says:

    I just fin­ished read­ing the Louis Arm­strong biog­ra­phy “POPS” by Ter­ry Tea­chout. These record­ings sound even bet­ter know­ing some the back­sto­ry that inspired them. Thanks for post­ing!

  • Jim McGaw says:

    Thought I had the best-sound­ing ver­sion of Arm­strong’s “Ain’t Mis­be­havin’ ” but this blows it away. For the love of God, is this avail­able on CD or mp3 down­load any­where?

  • Maruja Romero says:

    Que belleza. Sim­ple­mente fuera de serie. Unre­al!!!

  • David Forman says:

    Thank you for this thing of beau­ty

  • Robyn Massey says:

    “Rhap­sody in Blue ” at 2:13.

  • Watteau says:

    Per­son­el : Kid Ory ? John­ny Dodds ?Bar­ney Bigard? Lil hard­ing piano satch­mo’s wife ?

  • Crystal says:

    I may sound pret­ty dumb, but I hon­est­ly do not know. I just became my school’s One Act Play direc­tor for com­pe­ti­tion. We have to have copy­right per­mis­sion for all of our songs. One of our songs needs to be 1920s jazz. I need to know if there is a way for me to legal­ly down­load this music, and how I go about get­ting a let­ter of per­mis­sion to use it in our play per­for­mances. I know some music is stan­dard and does not require per­mis­sion due to the age of the music but want to make sure I am cov­er­ing all of my bases. I would hate for my stu­dents to be dis­qual­i­fied on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty like that. I appre­ci­ate your time and con­sid­er­a­tion.

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