Louis Armstrong recorded the immortal LP Satch Plays Fats in 1955–70 years ago! We’re a little late for the anniversary of the recording dates, which occurred on April 26, 27, and May 3, and we’re a little earl for the anniversary of the release, which took place in August 1955, but is there ever a bad time to celebrate this record? The answer is NO!
We’ll open with Louis Armstrong’s personal copy of the original Columbia album, CL 708:
And here’s the back cover, featuring liner notes by producer George Avakian:
To be honest up front, our Archives is unusually light on material about this seminal album. The opposite is true for its predecessor, Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy, which we celebrated with an overstuffed post back in 2021 featuring sheet music, rehearsal tapes, session photos, interviews, and much more. Satch Plays Fats seemed to come and go at a quicker pace; Avakian had the idea, Armstrong approved it, Avakian booked the studio time, the All Stars knocked out nine selections in three sessions then went back on the road, Avakian began postproduction edits and had it out by the late summer, released to positive reviews and strong sales.
But by the fall of 1955, Satch Plays Fats was being overshadowed by the aura of Armstrong as “Ambassador Satch”; his three-month European tour was making headlines, Edward R. Murrow was following him with a television crew, Avakian was in the process of recording the album Ambassador Satch, all while “Mack the Knife” was burning up the radio airwaves back home. Armstrong doesn’t seem to have given any interviews around this time about Satch Plays Fats and, though he owned multiple copies and dubbed them to tape, he didn’t talk about it or offer up any stories.
Thus, you might ask yourself, what kind of celebration will this be? Well, we do have some session photos that Jack Bradley obtained (he wasn’t on the scene yet to take them so he must have gotten them from Columbia Records), we have the music–and we have liner notes. In 2000, Sony reissued Satch Plays Fats on CD and asked George Avakian to write a new set of notes. Avakian did just that but for reasons that were never fully explained (and which angered George), Sony chose not to publish them, instead only including his 1955 essay, which had some mistakes he wanted to correct.
George shared “the unissued booklet” as the file was named the first time we met in 2002 and they were a help to me when I wrote the album notes for Mosaic Records’s 2021 boxed set, The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966. That set was a dream-come-true for me and my co-producers, Scott Wenzel, David Ostwald, and Rich Noorigian, as Sony offered up all the surviving session tapes, with lots of alternate and unedited takes to pore over. Unfortunately, that set is currently out-of-print and Sony has not made the music available yet on streaming services, but for this 70th anniversary post, I thought it would be appropriate to publish my section on Satch Plays Fats, peppering in audio of the master takes and the session photos we do have in our Archives to tell the story. Sound good?
We’ll kick off with one session photo that became the cover of the Mosaic set (and for the trumpeters, your eyes are not deceiving you, Louis is playing an EMO World trumpet, which he picked up in Germany in October 1952 and played until the summer of 1956, at which point he went back to his trusty Selmer–but what a magical period of blowing for Pops!):
To set the scene for my essay, I had just finished breathlessly describing Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy, which was supposed to be a one-off session for Columbia before Armstrong’s manager Joe Glaser re-signed him with Decca. However the results were so critically and commercially successful, Glaser paused and eventually let Avakian work his magic again. Here are my 2021 notes (which won an eventual GRAMMY I’m proud to say). Enjoy!
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Armstrong was back recording for Decca shortly after the Handy album was released, cutting two duets with Gary Crosby, two covers of early rock ’n’ roll ballads and two albums of live material at the Crescendo Club, all in January 1955. But Glaser could not deny the critical and commercial success of Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy and granted Avakian permission to record a follow-up in April: Satch Plays Fats, a collection of nine songs written by Armstrong’s close friend, the late Thomas “Fats” Waller. The result was another masterpiece, one, which, in recent years, seems to have overtaken Handy in some circles as the more heavily lauded album.
The next several paragraphs about the planning of Satch Plays Fats come from Avakian’s unpublished annotation for the 2000 Sony reissue of the album:
For his second Columbia album, Louis quickly embraced my suggestion of an album of Waller compositions. With some regret, we decided against including the earliest Waller tunes Louis had recorded (the classic GEORGIA BO BO and the rollicking I’M GOIN’ HUNTING) because they wouldn’t fit in with the better-known songs which of course had to be the heart of the project. This led to Louis reminiscing about Fats’ first pop efforts. “You know, Fats had kind of a hit back then. I used to play it and Bix recorded it — I’M MORE THAN SATISFIED.” Pops took out his horn and blew a few bars. “Oh my, Bix played it so pretty!” His eyes sparkled. (Pops was as animated at home as he was onstage. What you saw was always what you got.) Then his shoulders drooped. “But it won’t go with AIN’T MISBEHAVIN and those later ones.”
We discussed some of Fats’ great instrumentals, like MINOR DRAG, ZONKY and STEALIN’ APPLES.” (Andy Razaf had even written lyrics for the last two.) But we decided against doing any instrumentals, agreeing that they would break the mood we both felt the album should create. Of Fats’s pre-R&B novelties, we rejected THE JOINT IS JUMPIN (“Only Fats could pull that one off just right,” said the ever-modest Pops), but ALL THAT MEAT AND NO POTATOES was a natural for a duet with Velma Middleton.
We chose eleven songs — the nine we eventually did, plus two we finally omitted: I HATE TO LEAVE YOU NOW, recorded by Pops with his 1932 big band, and WILLOW TREE, plucked by Mildred Bailey in 1935 from the 1928 Waller-Razaf score for Keep Shufflin’.
Avakian told me that the All Stars were exhausted, more so here than on the previous album, and that occasionally comes through in their playing. The first session on April 26 kicked off with I’VE GOT A FEELING I’M FALLING, FOLLOWED BY HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, BLACK AND BLUE and AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’, the band sounding a little punchy by the last take of the latter tune. The next day, they returned to record I’M CRAZY ’BOUT MY BABY, BLUE TURNING GREY OVER YOU and ALL THAT MEAT AND NO POTATOES. At this point, the All Stars had to go back to work, performing a four-day engagement at the Ritz Theatre in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when they were called back into Columbia’s 30th Street studios in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 3. Avakian finished the album on that day with KEEPIN’ OUT OF MISCHIEF NOW and SQUEEZE ME, in addition to remaking AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ at a brighter, more effective tempo.
The album’s opener, Waller and Andy Razaf’s HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, was seemingly recorded by every jazz musician, but never by Armstrong, except for a short run-through on a memorable Martin Block jam session in 1938 with Waller himself at the piano. As on the Handy album, Middleton is there from the start to share vocal duties (listen for the bit before take 5 when Avakian tells her not to be too serious and she responds with a comedic, yet sarcastic, “Yeah man! Yowza!”) The slower first take is very rough, but is still exciting in its own way. Some bits of business didn’t survive past it, including Armstrong taking the awkward melody up an octave (he settled for using that technique on the ascending bridge) and Trummy Young using his HONEYSUCKLE ROSE contrafact THRU FOR THE NIGHT as a backing riff. By take 5, everything is straight and except for a brief second where Armstrong and Middleton begin the chorus vocal at the same time, the take appears to be flawless; it was released in full on the 1986 reissue of the album produced by Michael Brooks, who again didn’t have access to many of the original masters and had to make do with what he could find. The master take included some splicing, with Trummy’s solo coming from three different takes. As the opening track of the finished album, it could be viewed as a defiant Avakian’s answer to his critics, showing he wasn’t going to stop these practices anytime soon.
And because it’s referenced above, here’s the complete, unspliced Take 5, issued on CD in 1986:
BLUE TURNING GREY OVER YOU would go down as one of the undeniable highlights of Armstrong’s career. “It is one of the two greatest songs ever written by Razaf and Waller (the other is BLACK AND BLUE),” Avakian wrote in his unpublished annotation. “No ever came close to Louis on either one.” Armstrong originally recorded it with Luis Russell’s Orchestra in January 1930, a fine recording, but one that also showcased some of the younger Armstrong’s occasionally careless tendencies, cracking a couple of notes
on his double-timed breaks. If the older Armstrong could no longer execute the speedy runs he did as a young man, the younger Armstrong was not capable of turning in such a mature, emotional performance as this 1955 remake. The master take, even with its edits and splices, stands high on this writer’s short list of all-time favorite Armstrong performances, but like almost everything on this set, it wasn’t achieved easily.
After a short breakdown, we pick up the sequence with a completely unissued take 2 at a slightly faster clip than what followed. Armstrong’s playing and singing of the melody is exquisite from the beginning, but the rest of the band is still feeling their way with regards to the changes and where to place the breaks. (BLUE TURNING GREY OVER YOU — along with I’VE GOT A FEELING I’M FALLING — features a bridge that works with different sets of chords — as long as the musicians present agree to play the same changes.) An awkward break by Young puts Armstrong slightly behind the eight ball, but he still sounds relaxed from the opening notes, pulling off a tricky break before the wheels come off behind him on the bridge. He rallies for a strong finish — it’s really an above-average take for a first complete run-through — but all would benefit from listening to the playback and making another attempt.
With take 3 and its slightly slower tempo, we’re now officially in the realm of something special. Armstrong’s muted reading of the melody is extra tender and his vocal taps into a deep feeling again not always present in his earlier work. It’s a wonderful take — Michael Brooks would use most of it on his 1986 reissue — and Armstrong gets off to a strong start on trumpet (Young now sets him up with a simple ascending line to allow him to get his chops into his horn) but everything falls apart in the bridge, a combination of clashing chord changes and Bigard and Young awkwardly playing the same accents as the rhythm section. Armstrong seems upset as chews them out a bit, but Avakian is right there to call for an insert take and to tell Armstrong, “It’s beautiful.” Sufficiently inspired, Armstrong responded with one of his most perfectly constructed solos. Sure enough, insert take 3b would make up nearly the entire epic solo on the final album.
But Avakian wasn’t through. He called a take 4 and Armstrong produced an even better opening reading of the melody, also making its way onto the finished product. But after stumbling twice on the vocal — once biting off more than he could chew on a scat break, the other time because the rhythm section was late coming in after a break — Avakian decided it was best to start over again. It was the right call and the vocal on take 5 was the best of the lot to Avakian’s ears. The trumpet playing is no slouch either; one break kind of gets away from him, but he plays with great intensity from the bridge out. The bulk of this solo was used on both Brooks’ 1986 edition and Sony’s 2000 reissue prepared by Avakian and David Ostwald, and won the favor of trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, who believed it to be superior to the trumpet work Avakian used in 1955.
Regardless of preference, the master take and previously unissued alternates here provide a wealth of riches to digest (even with the occasional botched bridge). “I’m not ashamed to admit that every time I hear Pops sing it, I find myself gulping and tearing up, unable to speak for a while,” Avakian wrote in 2000. He was not alone.
Here’s the 1955 master:
And again, because I referenced it above, the 1986 Michael Brooks version with previously unissued material cobbled together from the other takes:
I’M CRAZY ’BOUT MY BABY features an irresistible medium tempo, though the first run-through — not included here — was a messy affair at a slower tempo, sounding as if it was the first time any of the musicians ever played it. By the faster take 3, there’s still some sloppiness and a somewhat hesitant-sounding vocal — Avakian made a note to remind Armstrong about turning the page of the sheet music before the next take — but overall, it’s a much smoother attempt, especially the chorus of trading between Young’s trombone and Armstrong’s scatting. Bigard botches the transitional phrase before the rideout, throwing off Armstrong’s equilibrium momentarily, but everyone rallies for a stomping finish. Matters improve even more so on take 5, parts of which have been heard on Sony’s 1986 and 2000 reissues, but never in full. Armstrong really wails at the end of that take, sufficiently warmed up and ready to turn in the performance that would make up the master — but not before a hilarious struggle with the vocal, requiring five inserts to iron out!
The third and final session ended with SQUEEZE ME, originally recorded by Armstrong with Earl Hines in 1928. Avakian told me years later that this was one of his regrets on the album, choosing to turn it back over to Armstrong and Middleton for their brand of jive instead of treating it in the style of the Hot Five. He was being unnecessarily hard on himself; the 1955 performance might be different, but it’s still quite wonderful on its own merits. The slower tempo allows for a more reflective, muted reading of the verse and melody up front before the good-natured vocal duet. Bigard, with one of his better efforts, and Young keep the smoky mood going for their split chorus, but Armstrong and company go out in strutting, dramatic fashion, Young in there with the leader every step of the way.
The previously unissued first take is really a glorified rehearsal as the band is still getting the routine together. Middleton is clearly unfamiliar with the verse and needs some guidance, which she gets in the guise of none other than George Avakian! Hearing Avakian nasally croon a bit of the lyrics is a priceless moment, but the rest of the take is insightful, as Armstrong is in great form right off the bat, taking the last chorus by himself in lead, with Bigard and Young sitting it out.
However, after this take, Avakian decided it would be better for Armstrong to overdub his vocal part later on. What could have happened? Was he struggling with the lyric? Did his voice need a break? Were they running out of time? We’ll never know but on the rest of the surviving takes, the only voice heard is Middleton, who even left a gap for Armstrong to fill, punctuating it with a well-timed, “Solid!” (The 1986 Michael
Brooks–produced edition didn’t have access to the master take or Armstrong’s overdubs, leaving Middleton and her “Solid” out there by herself without explanation.) The band couldn’t hide its tiredness by this point, struggling at the end of almost every complete take, but the combination of take 7 and an insert take was good enough to seal the deal and end the session.
KEEPIN’ OUT OF MISCHIEF NOW was first recorded at Armstrong’s final OKeh session as a leader on March 11, 1932. Though he probably hadn’t played it since, the 1955 version cuts it, featuring yet another one of those foot-patting tempos that are becoming harder and harder to find in 2020. The recording of it followed the pattern of some of these other performances, with early attempts featuring a slower tempo, some hesitant playing and singing, and a lack of a planned routine (on the first take, Armstrong needed to tell Young and Bigard to give him some time between the vocal and concluding trumpet solo to get his chops ready). Billy Kyle seems to have once again stepped in to perform some uncredited arranging duties, as within a few takes, Bigard and Young now had background parts to play. Armstrong is in a pure improvising mood, playing differently from take to take, getting stronger with each passing attempt — and there are lots of them. On the previously unissued take 4, Armstrong is feeling his oats, uncorking slippery phrases that remind one of his disciple Henry “Red” Allen. When Bigard and Young trade, Young seems to follow Bigard’s fragile lead and plays quite gingerly, an uncommon occurrence. But by take 9, it was decided to have Young and the rhythm section blast away during the trombone spots, before quieting down for Bigard’s efforts. The ploy works, but it further shines the spotlight on just how weak Bigard was on this date. (On take 10, not included here, Bigard flies out of tune with one of the most painful squeaks of his career.) One clue about the reason for Bigard’s malaise could be detected in a 1960 quote from Young after Bigard rejoined the All Stars after a long absence. Young praised Bigard and added, “He’s not drinking.” Clearly, Bigard was drinking in 1955; he would be out of the band within four months.
Avakian decided to go to the overdubbing well one more time on the master take by having Armstrong record a trumpet obbligato behind his own vocal. Michael Brooks used the complete take 9 on his 1986 version of the album, but Avakian stuck to a combination of 9 and 10, plus the overdubbed trumpet, creating one of the album’s most infectious tracks.
A bonus from the transfer sessions for the Mosaic set: a video I shot of Louis’s solo on the previously unissued take 4:
And here’s that complete Take 9 from the 1986 reissue:
Side 2 opened up with ALL THAT MEAT AND NO POTATOES, a lighter selection that was needed after Avakian was overcome with emotion from BLUE TURNING GREY. Middleton was called on once again to play Armstrong’s comic foil; nobody else did it better. Avakian decided to stay in the studio instead of the control booth for the first take so he could direct traffic. Bigard’s first note in the opening ensemble is a clam but other than that, it’s a fun, funky attempt with Armstrong launching some dynamite
glisses in the closing chorus. We again get to hear the band begin adjusting to the difference between Young and Bigard’s levels of strength, with Young getting to roar over a thudding backbeat, while Bigard noodles — and still squeaks — over more genteel backing. But other than Bigard, it’s an excellent first run, with a strong enough opening vocal for a chunk of it to make it onto the record. After two quick breakdowns, take 4 was the best of the bunch, making up much of the master. This track received a whole new life when it was featured in the 1999 cult comedy, Office Space, making it one of the best-known selections on the final album.
The next selection, I’VE GOT A FEELING I’M FALLING, was actually the first one recorded at the first session. On the previously unissued take 2, there’s a feeling that the band is swinging on eggshells at first, but that feeling subsides by the final chorus, as a modulation from Eb to F seems to serve as a call to action. Bigard’s sleepy in his spot, which seems to again affect Trummy, who blows effectively, but quieter than usual. Kyle is incredibly consistent from take to take but Armstrong is still taking chances, creating an exciting bridge after a slightly swallowed note. Two short breakdowns followed but when we pick up the action with take 5, the band really cooks, prompting a satisfied Avakian to shout upon its conclusion, “Good! That’s it! Nice. Want to do BLACK AND BLUE next?” But upon listening to the playback, some of the sloppy moments must have stuck out, resulting in a sixth take that proved to be the master. Still, Avakian had one more trick up his sleeve and, remembering the much-talked-about overdubbing on ATLANTA BLUES, had Armstrong scat a second part to his fairly straight vocal.
To take back you behind the scenes on the making of the Mosaic Records box, here’s a video I shot of the transfer of the outchorus of the previously unissued second take of “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling”; you’ll spot co-producers Scott Wenzel, David Ostwald, and Rich Noorigian, while Matt Cavaluzzo does the transfer:
After all of the unfamiliar tunes, it must have been gratifying for the All Stars to tackle BLACK AND BLUE, still currently in their repertoire (and often, beginning around this period, played as a medley with DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS, making for a pointed commentary on what Armstrong once described as his “disgustingly segregated” hometown). Even with the familiarity, the rehearsal take opens with Armstrong hitting an atypical cracked note. But even with the flaw, it’s worth issuing in full for the first time because Armstrong takes more chances, especially the way he plays with a repeated descending motif in the final bridge. Two more excellent takes followed, plus an insert to iron out the ending. Avakian chose a little from each to make the master, which he rightfully felt was one of the highlights of the finished album.
Discographies disagree about AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ as some say it was done entirely at the May 3 session but the original Columbia tape boxes show the first three takes were attempted at the end of the April 26 session. Take 1, first released on the aforementioned 1986 reissue, is a relaxed affair, potentially in a nod to the slower feel of the original 1929 recording that helped Armstrong “cross over.” But the band, especially Bigard and Young, sounded tired by the third take, leading Avakian to wrap up
the session and call for a remake on May 3, an out-and-out romp that became the final selection on the original album. Armstrong played it regularly for years with his big band, but only sporadically with the All Stars, though much of his concluding lead was minted before the stock market crash of 1929. The end of each take is ripped out of his mid-30s arrangement, hinting at his old showstopping routine on shine as he makes the slow, perfectly paced climb up into the stratosphere, backed all the way by Deems’ dancing, percolating drums up to that final, crowd-pleasing high note.
(And once again, here’s the alternate take from the April 26 session, issued on the 1986 CD and on the first Armstrong cassette I ever heard, 16 Most Requested Songs.)
Armstrong and the All Stars went back to the Ritz Theatre after the May 3 session and Avakian went to work in editing the album. He had his work cut out for him, especially in dealing with Bigard’s meager offerings (Arvell Shaw also got lost numerous times on the session tapes, which was unlike his usual reliable self). Avakian wrote to Joe Glaser a few weeks after the sessions: “The results are very good although the sidemen were not tremendous by any means and I had to do a great deal of splicing and editing to produce really good tapes. Louis himself was, as always, truly wonderful. The album is one that we can all be very proud of.”
The jazz press agreed. “To Columbia’s George Avakian must go a vote of thanks for this marvelous 12 inch LP,” Ralph J. Gleason wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle upon its release in August 1955. “The performances themselves, insofar as Armstrong is concerned, are every bit as good as anything he has ever done….Louis’ charm and Fats’ music make a perfect combination. And from time to time Armstrong raises that trumpet to his lips and blows just enough to show he’s still the champ, undefeated, untied and unscored on.” Nat Hentoff, who hung five stars on LOUIS ARMSTRONG PLAYS W.C. HANDY, gave SATCH PLAYS FATS four stars in the September 21, 1955 issue of Down Beat, docking it a star because “the presence of Velma Middleton…is unjustified” and “the members of Louis’ band let him down in this set.” Hentoff did praise Armstrong’s singing and playing and concluded, “The album is recommended for Louis’ work.”
Billboard predicted, “This one should move off the shelves rapidly, for there’s merchandising magic in the title.” They were right. In the October 1 issue, SATCH PLAYS FATS was number one on the magazine’s Jazz charts and number 10 in the overall Popular Albums chart, behind entries by the likes of Doris Day, Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Mario Lanza and the soundtrack of Oklahoma!
This was all music to Joe Glaser’s ears, who continued letting Avakian record Armstrong for the next year, resulting in the hit single MACK THE KNIFE and the popular live albums, AMBASSADOR SATCH, LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND EDDIE CONDON AT NEWPORT and SATCHMO THE GREAT. By the summer of 1956, Glaser had made Armstrong a free agent and he never again worked with Avakian, who left Columbia in 1957.
It’s worth quoting the conclusion of Avakian’s liner notes to the HANDY album: “The way I feel about this record can be summed up in this way. When I die, I want people to say, ‘That’s the guy that if it hadn’t been for him and Louis Armstrong and W.C. Handy, there wouldn’t have been that great record, LOUIS ARMSTRONG PLAYS W.C. HANDY.” Avakian died in 2017 at the age of 98 and people said a lot more than that but it remains true that his work with Armstrong remains the peak of his storied career. We hope that by showcasing these studio recordings (and on the aforementioned Mosaic set of live Armstrong material), it will be cause for new celebrations and appreciations of one of the great partnerships and friendships in jazz.
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That concludes the Satch Plays Fats portion of my 2021 liner notes for Mosaic Records, but there are a few items to add from our Archives. First, the only surviving photo of Louis and Fats Waller together comes from a 1941 issue of the Chicago Defender, found in one of Louis’s scrapbooks:
Back to the album, Arvell Shaw donated one of his scrapbooks in 1998 and on one page there are three snapshots that I believe are from the Fats sessions. I’ve cropped each one, so here’s the first, with Barney Bigard and road manager Pierre “Frenchy” Tallerie:
A little blurry, but Louis and George Avakian in conversation:
And perhaps the most telling image (reflected in Avakian’s comments, but not in the music), an absolutely exhausted-looking Armstrong taking a breather between tracks, seated next to Trummy Young:
Towards the end of my essay, I quoted an Avakain letter to Joe Glaser; that came from the late Chris Albertson, who noticed Columbia Records was tossing its entire Armstrong file in the early 1980s, filled with correspondence. Albertson rescued the file and sold it to the Armstrong House in 2017. Here’s that original Avakian letter, with Glaser’s reply following:
I also referenced some Satch Plays Fats reviews in the notes; Louis saved the one by Ralph J. Gleason:
While Jack Bradley managed to clip Nat Hentoff’s Downbeat review:
Even more have since come to light in this wonderful digitized world of ours. Variety was actually first out of the gate, reviewing it in its August 3, 1955 issue:
“Putting Louis Armstrong into the groove with Fats Waller melodies shows top wax production savvy on the part of George Avakian, Columbia pop album chief. It’s a Solid idea that comes off with standout effect. Armstrong and his combo seem to really dig the Waller compositions and their enjoyment in working ’em over projects through the wax. There are nine tunes in the set, including such faves as ‘Honeysuckle’Rose,’ ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ and ‘I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling.’ Armstrong shares some of the vocals with Velma Middleton. Avakian has also supplied a set of lively liner notes.”
John S. Wilson was one of the All Stars’s most savage critics when it came to reviewing their live performances in the New York Times, but he gave Satch Plays Fats high marks in the September 1955 issue of High Fidelity:
“Last winter, when Columbia released its excellent Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy LP, George Avakian, Columbia’s jazz man, was widely commended for his alertness in snatching Armstrong during an interval of a few days between the expiration of his old contract with Decca and the signing of a new one with the same company, rushing him to Columbia’s studios and recording the Handy numbers. Now it appears that Avakian was even more alert than had been realized for, in addition to the Handy set, he also got a group of Fats Waller compositions from Armstrong and his All-Stars at the same
time.
This new set is at least as good as the Handy release and, in some respects, better since Waller was a more fertile composer than Handy. The material, with the exception of All That Meat and No Potatoes, could scarcely be improved on. No one could be more aware of this than Armstrong himself who has had all but one or two of the selections in his active repertoire ever since they were written. The emphasis in performance is more strongly than ever on Armstrong which is just as well since his group, with the notable exception of Billy Kyle, is showing increasing signs of inadequacy. But Armstrong pours it on throughout the thirty-eight minutes of this LP, singing and playing a magnificently expressive version of Blue Turning Grey Over You, scarfing in duet with Trummy Young’s trombone on I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby (in the lyrics of which he announces, “I’m the world’s most happy screecher”) and repeating Black and Blue and Ain’t Misbehavin’ in almost the same form that he gave them twenty-five and more years ago.
This is, in general, a very wonderful record. Armstrong in top form is an ideal interpreter of Waller’s best compositions. That’s his form here and he has been recorded with the same presence achieved on the Handy set.”
Meanwhile, over in Metronome, Bill Coss, who also regularly savaged the All Stars in this period, reviewed Satch Plays Fats–and was not very impressed, giving it a B-minus and writing:
“Except for George Avakian’s excellent notes and some individual bits of singing by Louis, there’s not much to recommend about this LP notwithstanding the fact that these are Waller tunes. Track 2 is sensitive, but I question the fitness of Louis’ scat-singing within this context; it’s more in place on ‘Feeling.’ On the other hand, tracks 3, 5, and 6 are wailers, filled with natural good humor and not plagued with the uneasy intonation of ‘Squeeze Me.’ Only Trummy Young gets space and energy enough to impress musically. And one disheartening thing: dig the extreme similarity between Louis’ solo on ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ in this LP with his solo on the same tune in the Victor Album of some years ago, ‘Armstrong at [Town] Hall.”
But as referenced at the start of this post, Satch Plays Fats was released in the middle of an incredibly exciting period for Armstrong. This is borne out by two surviving letters Glaser sent Avakian on October 29, 1955. Here’s the first, a short note about having received the signed copy of Satch Plays Fats contract:
And then later that same day, a more breathless missive about “Mack the Knife” and Edward R. Murrow following Louis in Europe:
In addition to Murrow, one day later, Avakian recorded the All Stars at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, kicking off the Ambassador Satch sessions. Satch Plays Fats was left behind and Armstrong moved on without ever really referencing it–except for a July 1956 Voice of America session that found Armstrong alone in the studio acting as disc jockey, spinning his favorite records and telling stories about each. In the fifth and final hour, he chose “Blue Turning Grey Over You” and though he doesn’t really offer any commentary about the album, there’s some nice tidbits about Armstrong performing it as a duet with Jean Smart at Connie’s Inn in 1929 and his fond memories of Waller (I’ve faded out the performance in between the talking sections):
And that’s really it from our Archives, except I do feel we should give the final word to the late, great George Avakian, who closed his unpublished 2000 essay by writing, “To which the rest of us can add: bless you, Fats; bless you, Pops. And thank you, Lord!”
And thank you–and bless you–George Avakian!