Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 5: George Avakian and the Release of “King Louis”

In our (very long) previous installment to this series, we told the tale of how the records Louis Armstrong made with the Hot Five and Hot Seven in the 1920s were extremely influential to those who heard them…but there were a lot of people who didn’t hear them at the time of their release because they were marketed as “Race Records.” Early critics who picked up on them knocked those sides for being “primitive.” By the mid-1930s, the original recordings were out of print and fetching big bucks on the worldwide “Hot Club” scene, leading to a handful of reissues in the back half of the decade. Even those releases received some two-star reviews, with the thinking being that they were old-fashioned sides that would only appeal to collectors during the height of the Swing Era.

Yet here we are in 2025 and the music of the Hot Five is generally regarded as the cornerstone of early jazz, the foundation of all that followed, cementing Armstrong’s reptuation as “the Prometheus figure of jazz music,” as Jon Batiste recently called him. The music has been transcribed and analyzed by musicologists like Gunther Schuller and Brian Harker, it has been performed by groups led by Wynton Marsalis, and has been at the center of numerous centennial celebrations, such as the one you are currently reading.

What changed? Perhaps a better question is, who changed it?

This man:

Yes, folks, that is George Mesrop Avakian, one of the most influential record producers of the 20th century. If you don’t believe me, here’s a perfect paragraph written by John McDonough in the Wall Street Journal on June 3, 1997:

“Ask any jazz expert to name the music’s greatest all-time figures and pretty quickly you’ll hear the name Louis Armstrong. Ask your expert to name his finest recordings and you’ll surely hear such titles as ‘West End Blues’ and ‘Potato Head Blues.’ You’ll hear this because Armstrong and those records are part of the jazz canon. But where do such canons come from? Who said that Armstrong and ‘Potato Head Blues’ were so great in the first place? The answer is, George Avakian said so.”

If you don’t know much about Avakian, his National Endowment for the Arts interview is a good place to start (you might also want to explore the digital collections of the New York Public Library, which has provided multiple images for this post). Born on March 15, 1919 to Armenian parents in Armavir, Russia, the Avakian family moved to New York City in 1923 (George vividly remembered seeing Babe Ruth hit a home run at Yankee Stadium in the 1920s). But for our purposes, the story begins in the early 1930s when Avakian, then a student at the prestigious Horace Mann School for Boys in the Bronx, began paying attention to the music he was listening to on the radio. As he told JazzTimes magazine in 2000:

“I became interested in jazz when I was 13, maybe 14. I would dial in some music late at night-surreptitiously and very softly, after my parents thought I was asleep-like the Casa Loma Orchestra, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, whose records I started to buy, and by 1935 there was Benny Goodman, who shared a three-hour Saturday night program, Let’s Dance with a couple of other bands that I yawned through. By the time of my senior year of high school in Sept. 1936 I supplemented my radio listening with a modest record collection built on an allowance of 50¢ a week. In November, I interviewed the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, for my school newspaper, The Horace Mann Record.“

(That interview has been digitized by the NYPL and can be viewed here!)

By September 1937, Avakian’s music fandom was mentioned in a profile that ran in the Horace Man Record, complete with photograph (look at all that hair!):

Avakian was awarded the Alumni Award for being “the most outstanding citizen in the Senior Class,” noting that Avakian was class president, editor-in-chief of the paper, a member of the honored Archon Society, and a “gifted baseball player.” “Besides being outstanding in these activities, Avakian was a noted swing enthusast,” the profile added. “He wrote several ‘Music Goes ‘Round’ columns in the RECORD and also a lengthy piece in the Quarterly.”

That same month, Avakian had his first letter published in Metronome magazine, praising the Casa Loma Orchestra, while knocking Benny Goodman and complaining that Duke Ellington “is almost always a disappointment on wax”–ironic considering his later close associations with both Ellington and Goodman.

But Avakian soon had his “big bang” moment after he landed on the radar of Lester Koenig, a burgeoning record collector who was the brother of one of Avakain’s classmates, Julian Koenig.

“Does George know about Louis Armstrong?” Lester asked his brother.

“Yes,” Julian responded, “he thinks he’s real flashy and sings kind of funny, but he likes him.”

“Invite him to the house Saturday”, Lester responded. “Your friend needs to hear some real Armstrong.”

This pivotal meeting occurred during Thanksgiving weekend in 1937 [Avakian recalled it was 1936, but 1937 seems to fit the timeline better; either way, it happend!] and was fondly remembered by Avakian in his 2000 JazzTimes piece, writing:

“Wow! I got instant religion with a capital R. It was my introduction to ‘Cornet Chop Suey,’ ‘West End Blues,’ ‘Struttin’ With Some Barbecue’ and more. All the discs were thickly solid with magenta or red labels bearing the name Okeh in script.
‘Where can I buy them?’ I asked.
‘You can’t,’ said Les. ‘They’re all out of print now. Brunswick owns Okeh, but they’re just sitting on them.’
‘That’s criminal,’ I said. ‘I’m going to write them a letter.’ I did and received no answer.”

Avakian graduated from Horace Mann and enrolled in Yale University soon after. Moving to New Haven, Connecticut, he became a regular presence in the jazz trades, writing more letters to Metronome (he was at the famed “battle” at the Savoy between Chick Webb and Count Basie in January 1938 and thought Basie emerged victorious). Producer/impresario John Hammond name-checked him and other “Yale men” spotted at a performance by trumpeter Billy Douglas in the March 1938 issue of Tempo. That magazine gave him the opportunity to write a review of a Madison Square Garden concert with Basie and Goodman in July 1938 (with the unfortunate typo “Avarkian).

Tempo also featured a “Collector’s Corner” column by Marshall Stearns, one of the most influential of the early jazz historians (and the man ultimately responsible for the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers). While still a freshman at Yale, Avakian decided to seek out Stearns, who was a graduate student at the same university. Here’s Avakian in 2000:

“I rang the doorbell at 20 Lake Place, the address listed under the by-line of Marshall Stearns’ Collector’s Corner column in Tempo magazine. I had learned from a fellow freshman, Jerry King, that this gracious man held an open house every Friday evening for anyone who wanted to listen to and talk about jazz records.
Marshall’s collection, one of the best in the world at the time, exposed me to virtually the entire gamut of early jazz records, as well as the rest of the Hot Fives and Sevens. I’d only been able to find perhaps five or six of these rarities, and it still rankled me that the public couldn’t buy them over the counter (though three or four had become available via special order through the United Hot Clubs of America, of which Marshall had been a principal organizer). By the end of my freshman year (June 1938), Marshall had tired of writing Collector’s Corner and turned it over to me.”

Here’s a wonderful photo of Avakian and Stearns from this period, taken from Avakian’s collection at the New York Public Library:

Indeed, Avakian’s “New York News” column debuted in the September 1938 issue of Tempo. He covered the latest happenings in the Big Apple, but he also included a small “Collector’s Corner” segment and was keeping tabs on the reissues that were trickling out on labels like Hot Record Society, writing one long column about Brunswick waiting too long to reissue King Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues,” having been beaten to the punch by Steve Smith’s Hot Record Society. By May 1939, Avakian’s column was now called “Collector’s Corner” and was exclusively chronocling the reissue scene, noting that, “Up at American Records John Hammond dug up five previously unknown Louis Armstrong accompaniments. They’ll be issued shortly along with several other fine repressings, including a Bix album.” Avakian also shared that “Bluebird announced its complete list of repressings,” including 1920s works by Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton. Avakian said this was the result of an idea by John Reid of Philadelphia and someone should “pin a medal on him.”

Avakian, too, had ideas and recalled that “[Stearns] and Jerry encouraged me to write again to Brunswick about starting a reissue program. This time I went well beyond the Hot Fives and Sevens, writing pages and pages of specifics concerning more than a dozen artists and citing the need for annotated albums because there was so little published information about the music and the performers. I got a brief acknowledgement letter in return, but nothing more.”

Perhaps part of the reason Avakian didn’t get a response is because of the labels were going through a time of transition. “By the end of 1939, the popular acceptance of swing music had aroused a glimmer of interest in its origins,” Avakian wrote. “The Columbia Broadcasting System had just bought the bankrupt American Recording Corporation and started phasing out its principal label name, Brunswick. Edward Wallerstein, president of the newly revived Columbia Records label, decided that the time was right for the company to embark on a serious program of jazz reissues.”

John Hammond, a cornerstone of the American Recording Corporation, was retained by Columbia and was approached by Wallerstein “to inaugurate a reissue program, to be called ‘Hot Jazz Classics,'” Avakian recalled. “But John had helped launch the bandleading careers of Benny Goodman and Count Basie and was more interested in new record production. He told Mr. Wallerstein, ‘A young fellow I know writes a collector’s column for Tempo; he could do it better than I can, and he’s at Yale University, just 25 miles from our factory at Bridgeport.”

By this point, though, Avakian was busy helping Decca records on a groundbreaking project, mostly because they answered his letter first. “I started writing letters to record companies urging that jazz — including reissues of unavailable classics — should be released in album form, because it was worthy of preservation and study beyond the three-minute 78-rpm side, and with extensive annotation similar to those in classical albums for symphonies, operas, etc., complete with histories of the music, its performers and their historic significance,” he told NPR in 2010. “My first answer came years later — a one-cent postcard from Decca, inviting me to stop by during my 1939 summer vacation to discuss my idea … beginning with new recordings by the pioneers of the three cities where jazz became established — New Orleans, Chicago and Kansas City.”

Decca put Avakian in charge of producing new sessions featuring guitarist Eddie Condon’s group in October 1939, to be featured on Chicago Jazz, the first jazz concept album featuring new recordings with a common theme, liner notes, and session photos. Again, from the NYPL, here’s a period photo of Condon and Avakian:

But Avakian didn’t go on to produce Decca’s New Orleans Jazz and Kansas City Jazz sets (those honors went to Steve Smith of the Hot Record Society and Dave Dexter Jr., respectively) because by early 1940, Avakian had heard back from Columbia Records. Here’s more from JazzTimes:

“Mr. Wallerstein invited me to come to a meeting on Washington’s Birthday in 1940 at which the reissue idea would be discussed. He began by asking Mr. L. J. Morrison, the factory manager, to read some letters from the public about reissuing jazz. Mr. Morrison read one, and as he glanced with some misgiving at the pages of enclosures, I spoke up.
“Excuse me, sir, I think I wrote that letter in 1938.”
“So you did,” said Mr. Morrison. “Did you get a reply?” asked Mr. Wallerstein.
“Yes, sir; that this was a matter for the advertising department in New York to consider, and I would hear from them shortly.’
“And did you?”
“No, sir.”
‘Well, you’ve got an answer now. We like your proposal of four albums and some singles on each release. Can you come to Bridgeport once a week?
‘Yes, sir!”
It was a dream come true. On Thursdays I had only one early class, and my roommate, Ray Fuller, had a reasonably reliable old sedan. At the Columbia factory there were three large rooms with thousands of metal masters, floor to ceiling, filed in numerical blocks. A great many had no other identifications but armed with a 1938 edition of Charles Delaunay’s Hot Discography and my own notebooks, I started researching.”

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For the next part of the story, we’re going to continue to let Avakian tell it, but this time we’re going to go way back to the December 1940 issue of Jazz Information, when Avakian penned the article, “How I Found the Unissued Armstrongs.” As backstory, Avakian was now officially working with Columbia and planning an Armstrong album to be titled King Louis. The original plan was for it to contain six sides: “Heebie Jeebies,” “Potato Head Blues,” “Squeeze Me,” “No One Else But You,” “Save It, Pretty Mama,” and “Knockin’ a Jug.” But on one soon-to-be-legendary day in Bridgeport, Avakian made some truly historic discoveries–here’s the complete story from 1940 (to set the table, here’s the cover of that issue, featuring an image of Sidney Bechet):

How I Found The Unissued Armstrongs
By George M. Avakian
I had left my watch in New York the day before, and when I woke up that Friday morning in Bridgeport. I had no idea what time it was. But the sun was pouring in the window, so I got up anyway and went down to the Columbia office.
That’s how the unissued Armstrongs were discovered.
For it was only eight o’clock when I got to the office, and like most lazy loafers I didn’t want to start before anyone else did. To kill time, I looked through the huge pile of Louis Armstrong contracts which Mr. Seton, Columbia’s lawyer, had left in my care given to the accounting department. It was mostly legal stuff which I couldn’t understand, but an occasional letter from Louis made it interesting.
In the last thick folder was a list of all the titles and master numbers which Louis had recorded and been paid for during 1927 and 1928. One of the selections looked unfamiliar — then another — and another — I realized that they had never been released!
But I had run into this sort of thing before – twenty or more Bessies, for instance, which had been made but destroyed without being used (thank God that somehow ‘Cakewalkin’ Babies’ and ‘At The Christmas Ball’ survived). So I restrained the impulse to get excited.
However, having lots of time, I decided to check up on the numerical Okeh master file, just to be sure. I had gone through it before, but the file cards represented released material only. Any unknown masters were indicated by blank white cards.
I looked up the first number … 80851 … and there it was: a white card with nothing on it but the number pencilled in one corner. The room got kind of hot and cold, but I swallowed hard and fumbled for the next number. It was 80864, and when another white card turned up I had to stop for a minute and let the floor settle down. Enough to say that three others followed and Avak was running a gentle 104°.
Wondering if there could be some mistake, I checked against the master inventory sheets. Five again — but not the same five! There was one in the file card system  which hadn’t been inventoried, and one in the inventory which wasn’t among the file cards. That made six in all — maybe. Just to be sure, I went down to the master room with one of the boys to pick them off the shelves, and we came upstairs with six beautiful Okeh masters.
Get these six into the Louis album, I thought. But that very Friday was the last day for putting through the initial release of Hot Jazz Classics!
It always works out that way, doesn’t it?
A break came on the next Wednesday. A final check-up was made on the titles chosen for the Armstrong album and there was a slight hitch on the couplings selected for Squeeze Me and Knockin’ A Jug.
“Shove in two other Armstrongs,” I was told.
It was too late to make tests of the unissued masters, but by Monday morning they were processed to a stage where I could listen copper positives.There was a tense moment as the first one began. What if the masters were all Italian tenors singing Pagliacci, or Reverend Gates and his Congregation? But the first two spins of ‘S.O.L. Blues’ brought relief. Among the rest was ’12th Street Rag.’ I knew there would be no difficulty in clearing authorship and copyright on these two, so they went into the works as the new couplings.
Lucky? Sure. I had been scouring the files for six months; yet I would have located only two of the six if I had simply checked the master numbers adjoining known Armstrong sessions. The other four are, as George Beall would say, “orphans”. They’re all alone in the numerical series, surrounded by Sophie Tucker and Sam Lanin’s Famous Players.
The discovery of the unissued Armstrongs was, I think, the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me as a record collector. And, best of all, it’s a break which can be shared with all record collectors.

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So what were “the unissued Armstrongs”? “S. O. L. Blues” and “Twelfth Street Rag” were two Hot Seven sides that Avakian immediately got onto the reissue album he was working on. But there were also mysteries like “Chicago Breakdown” by a unknown large ensemble, something called “Slidin'” that sounded suspiciously like “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” plus “The Last Time” with the original Hot Five and “Don’t Jive Me” with the Earl Hines edition. Avakian needed answers and there was only one man who could provide them: Louis Armstrong.

Avakian had met Armstrong once before when he came to New Haven and attended a dinner hosted by Marshall Stearns. Avakian told this story to Italian filmmaker Michele Cinque in 2012, an interview we proudly host in our Archives; here’s this segment:

Avakian caught up with Armstrong backstage at the Apollo Theater, most likely around the time Armstrong opened there on May 2, 1940. “When I gave Louis a set of the newly discovered test pressings in the spring of 1940 (there were six Hot Fives and Sevens in all, plus half a dozen others) his delight was boundless, especially after we both realized that a few months later these unidentified metal masters would have been automatically recycled because wartime scrap drives had increased as Hitler’s armies advanced, even though America was still considered neutral,” Avakian recalled. “Although I was half his age and still going to school, Louis treated me as a friend, not an eager fan.”

Perhaps now is a good time to share some audio! In 1993, Avakian discovered several reel-to-reel tapes in his basement and drove them out to the Louis Armstrong Archives, where Michael Cogswell transferred them and added them to the collection. On one of the tapes was an interview with a broadcaster I have not been able to identify, but it’s a great segment as Avakian tells the tale of discovering the unissued sides, bringing them to Louis, and then being invited by Louis to meet his new girlfriend: Lucille Wilson.

This was one of Avakian’s favorite stories, one he told it on camera to Michele Cinque in 2012 and is definitely worth sharing again:

As the Hot Jazz Classics series geared up for release in October 1940, the Columbia publicity juggurnaut kicked into high gear, creating a lot of buzz for these albums. From the NYPL collection, here’s an advertisement for the first batch of releases, four albums and a slew of singles:

And also from the NYPL, a charming photo of Avakian “unboxing” a set of “Hot Jazz Classics” releases:

And without further ado, the cover art of that historic release, King Louis, designed by the legendary Alex Steinweiss, then 23-years-old and a recent hire as Columbia’s art director:

Avakian personally gave a copy to Louis, who turned around and gave to Lucille. Both Avakian and Armstrong signed this copy of King Louis–Avakian wrote, “Lucille, I hope you go for this Louis fella and these records for a long time,” and Louis added, “Yes ma’am”–and it remains in our Archives to this day. (The green ink is severely faded so it doesn’t reproduce well in the scan, but it’s still a charming artifact!)

Perhaps we should take a moment to share the music contained on King Louis? Here it is, courtesy of a Spotify playlist:

Columbia seemed to make sure that every newspaper and magazine received a copy so media coverage of King Louis was quite copious; a large sampling will appear below.

First up, “Barrelhouse Dan” (has he ever been properly identified?), the record reviewer in Down Beat:

Some of Louis’ greatest vocal and horn work is included here, most of it made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven, and featuring Earl Hines, Zutty Singleton and others. ‘Knockin’ a Jug’ is the best, featuring Jack Teagarden, Eddie Lang, Joe Sullivan and Happy Caldwell, as well as Satchmo himself. But all of the sides are good examples of early Louis. ‘S.O.L.’ and ‘12th Street’ have never before been issued. Credit for all this output must go first to Columbia’s officials, and secondly, to John Hammon and George M. Avakian, who supervised the issuing of platters, checked personnels, and prepared the finished sides. The Armstrong album is the best of the four and should be heard by everyone interested in jazz. 
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Here’s Howard Taubman in the New York Times, November 3, 1940:

If you are a connoisseur of hot jazz from way back, or even if you arrived at a taste for it recently, outstanding names of the Twenties are as familiar to you as the current leaders in the field. If you are still on the outside looking in, or have peeked in only to turn away in disappointment, perhaps an encounter with the top-notch old-timers will give you a new perspective. At any rate, Columbia has gone back to its files and has rediscovered what it calls the Hot Jass Classics. These are to be reissued periodically. Columbia is aiming at the fancier who wants duplicates or wishes to fill in gaps in his collection. It is also seeking to attract “the listener who is interested in modern native musical developments and wishes to attain a deeper appreciation of it.”
[…]
Some of the numbers in the albums and on the singles have not been released before. Others are “second masters.” As to the “second masters,” Columbia’s announcement says that they “are a source of special excitement to jazz fanciers. The released master of a recording date may not be the best, according to a jazz connoisseur’s viewpoint. Therefore, many of the so-called ‘second masters’ are superior from the hot angle to the ones originally released.”
[…]
It is impossible to list all the instrumentalists who back up the big names in the various records. But in listening one understands why these musicians and their playing of another day is recalled with ecstasy by these who like hot jazz. For, whatever you may think of their music, they were artists at it. Armstrong and Henderson are still around, and their talents are undiminished. But these records show how their styles had already formed. And you understand why the names of Bessie Smith and Bix Beiderbecke are now virtually legends. There is a vitality and earthiness in the music and especially in the performers. There is breathtaking virtuosity on the part of the instrumentalists in solo and ensemble work. Bessie Smith’s singing is memorable, not for vocal quality but for its style and suggestiveness. The connoisseurs find a world of variety in these selections. Perhaps they are right. But you need not go overboard with them to concede that hot jazz at its best is worth your attention as music and as a social phenomenon.
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Here’s Frank Marshall Davis (a mentor of President Barack Obama) reviewing it for the Associated Negro Press:

The first album of the highly publicized re-issue of hot jazz classics fittingly devoted to the unequalled trumpet work of Louis Armstrong, Consisting of four records, the collection bears the title of “King Louis.” Numbers and dates of recording are “Heebie Jeebies” (1926) and “Potatoe Head Blues” (1927); “S.O.L. Blues” (1927) and “Squeeze Me” (1928); “Save It, Pretty Mama” (1928) and “No One Else But You” (1928); “Twelfth Street Rag’ (1927) and “Knockin’ a Jug” (1929). Of these tunes, “S.O.L.” and “Twelfth Street” have never been released, all of which makes them doubly interesting to the thousands of Satchmo followers. Playing with him were such other greats as Johnny Dodds, clarinet; Lil Armstrong, piano; Baby Dodds, drums; Kid Ory, trombone; Johnny St. Cyr, banjo; and Pete Diggs [sic], bass.
Of unusual interest are the clarinet chorus on the first side, and the lazy trombone and tuba on the – rag, which is, incidentally, about as slow I have heard it played. Armstrong muffs a few notes but his trumpet is so grand otherwise that this doesn’t necessarily detract. “Squeeze Me,” “Save It” and “No One Else” all have Earl Hines performing marvelously at the keyboard along with Zutty Singleton’s drumming. “Heebies” was Louie’s first big selling record and on which singing was introduced. “Potato Head” has a trumpet chorus that is unbelievably out of this world.
But, of course, the cream  of the album is the famous “Knockin’ a Jug,” one of the grandest blues in all jazz history, with Trombonist Jack Teagarden, Guitarist Eddie Lang, Tenorman Happy Cauldwell, Pianist Joe Sullivan and Drummer Kaiser Marshall.
Armstrong today remains the world’s greatest trumpeter. But when the discs in this album were cut, he was as far over his present form as Ellington’s band is over the Chitlin’ Stompers of Hogwash, Texas. Well, maybe not that much. But anyway, for really righteous jazz, this is what the doctor prescribed.
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Davis was a major Armstrong supporter in the Black press, still believing him to be “the world’s greatest trumpeter” in 1940–yet, he also adds that the Armstrong in the 1920s was “far over his present form,” the first of many knocks the presentday Armstrong would have to endure.

As we discussed last time, the original Hot Five with Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Johnny St. Cyr, and Lil Hardin Armstrong was usually put down at the expense of the later edition with Earl Hines whenever these records were discussed in print in the early 1930s. Though King Louis only had one selection by that group–“Heebie Jeebies”–and three with Hines, it was enough for some writers to reverse the conventional opinion and champion the work of the earlier lineup.

For example, in the December 20, 1940 issue of Jazz Information, Robert Quinlisk did a deep dive on King Louis, praising “Heebie Jeebies” because “In this period Louis was very New Orleans” and “the opening ensemble swings incredibly.” But when Quinlisk gets to the Hines sides, he calls them “wonderful” but adds “few of them have the freshness and drive of the early Hot Fives.” Something was changing.

Over in the San Francisco Chronicle, their jazz writer, “Jive,” explained that “These records are from the primitive period in Louis’ development–the late ’20s, when this greatest of Jazz musicians was just ripening toward his golden period of popularity.” Now, “primitive” seemed like a compliment. “All these tunes show the strong earmarks of Negro New Orleans style–very different from the modern Ellington or Kansas City styles, or the white Dixieland copy,” Jive wrote. “Harsh and austere, full of raucous instrumental stunting, this music is going to be hard for some to like, and we can only assure you that the effort to understand it will prove rewarding. There never was purer jazz than the original New Orleans: The word ‘commercial’ just has no meaning in this connection.” Jive concluded his review with, “If you wanted a compact selection of early Armstrong which would give you the cream of his works, you couldn’t have chosen better than this album does for you.”

Not everyone felt that way. In our last installment, we shared part of a 1937 Down Beat article by Paul Eduard Miller of Chicago who argued that Armstrong’s role as an important figure in the devlopment of jazz was “overemphasized” because he wasn’t really a bandleader until 1929. The release of King Louis didn’t change his mind.

“Not much as music,” is how Miller began his review in the December 1940 issue of Music and Rhythm. “This album might serve high school kids as an introduction to the Louis Armstrong of the latter 1920’s-but hardly anything more than that. With the single exception of Potato Head, these eight sides are not, as Columbia’s press department would have you believe, ‘the cream’ of Armstrong’s Okeh platters. The content of ‘the cream’ suffers considerably by the omission of West End Blues, Wild Man Blues, Savoy Blues, Drop That Sack, Cornet Chop Suey, Muggles, Weather Bird, I’m Not Rough, Skip the Gutter, and Knee Drops. This release fails to measure up to the high standards which, presumably, Columbia is assuming in its presentation of ‘hot jazz classics.'”

One month later, Miller dug in even further with a short “Musical Blasephemies” column about Armstrong in the January 1941 issue of Music and Rhythm. Here it is, in all its unglory:

Phew. There it is, the beginning of an argument that would not die down for the rest of the century. Miller might not have been impressed with the selections on King Louis but perhaps they made him realize that the Armstrong of 1941 was “no longer a vital force in hot jazz.” “Gradually he substituted these meaningless pyrotechnics for the more sober, more sincere performances of the days of the Armstrong Hot Five,” Miller continued. “Armstrong had chosen to play exclusively for the box-office.”

Armstrong and Avakian would remain lifelong friends, but ironically, Avakian’s efforts to shine a light on Armstrong’s rarest, earliest recordings as a leader set the trumpeter up to unfairly compete with his younger self, a competition that would endure for the rest of his career and beyond.

[Side note: Miller will return in the next part of this series, but it should be mentioned that Armstrong was aware of Miller’s column; a copy of it was found in his collection after his wife Lucille passed away in 1983. Also found in the collection? A copy of Miller’s 1943 Yearbook of Popular Music–inscribed by the author! Here’s the cover:

And here’s the inscription–to “The greatest and most influential trumpeter in jazz history.” Hmmmmmm….]

But as the calendar turned to 1941, it was clear that Columbia’s “Hot Jazz Classics” series was a hit. Though still attending Yale, Avakian would be tapped to produce two more Armstrong reissues in 1941, ones that focused squarely on both the original Hot Five and the combination with Earl Hines. Armstrong also hired a publicity service that compiled all of his press clippings into a scrapbook for the year 1941–we’ll share many of those clippings and continue the saga of Armstrong, the Hot Five, Columbia Records, George Avakian, and the canonization of jazz history in Part 6–thanks for reading!