Louis Armstrong’s America, Vol. 1 (ESP-Disk’)
Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra
Released September 13, 2024
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2024
JazzTimes 2024 Year in Review
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About:
One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong’s America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he’s a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn’t operate in the realm of the predictable, though; instead, the concept—powered entirely by Lowe compositions—takes in not just Armstrong’s influence but also the evolution of jazz starting with influences (not all jazz) on Armstrong and continuing to the end of his five-decade career in 1971—which means that even Albert Ayler is touched on in this wide-ranging album (heck, even indie-rock icon Steve Albini is referenced). Lowe writes, “I think that Louis Armstrong may have been the first true post-modernist, picking and choosing between a hierarchy of personal and public musical sources and tastes, but without any concern for the way in which hierarchy acted on all of this in terms of class and even, ultimately, race (e.g.; think of Armstrong’s reverence for opera and the way it effected his broad and classically expressive method of phrasing). So he fits all the definitions of post-modernism, even as a kind of anachronistic vessel for so much that was still to come not just in jazz but in all of American popular music, in particular but not only through the mediation of black life and aesthetics. Black song, vernacular and popular, is amazingly flexible it its ways and means of expression, lyrically, rhythmically, and sonically.”
NOTE: This album’s a pair of two-CD packages. We’re bundling them as they were created as a cohesive album.
Track Listing:
Disc 1
1. Mr. Jenkins’ Lonely Orphans Band 06:15 (A)
2. Aaron Copland Has the Blues 05:32 (D)
3. Bo Did It 03:04 (H)
4. Calling All Freaks 06:33 (A)
5. Sepia Danceteria 04:15 (C)
6. The Old Regulars 05:34 (L)
7. The Last Bebop Tune 04:36 (E)
8. Laughing With Louis 04:00 (J)
9. Utah Smith Visits MOMA 03:23 (E)
10. One Two Fuck You: Steve Albini Ascends to Heaven 02:22 (H)
11. Love Is a Memory 04:16 (M)
12. Mr. Harney Turn Me Loose 03:31 (I)
13. Valley of Sorrows 03:59 (J)
14. Riot on the Sunset Strip 04:30 (L)
15. Hello Dali 03:07 (G)
16. I Should Have Stayed Dead (Ballad) 03:21 (I)
17. Shufflin’ the Deck (Take 5, Please!) 04:16 (K)
18. Muskrat Rumble 03:05 (G)
Disc 2
1. The Seven Foot Policeman 03:07 (A)
2. When Dave Schildkraut Goes Marching In 03:33 (E)
3. Bathing With Doc Walsh 02:14 (F)
4. Under the Weather 03:56 (C)
5. Candy, Darling 03:57 (E)
6. The Other Side of the Tracks 07:24 (K)
7. Little Rock Goddamn 04:40 (F)
8. Blue Mist 03:39 (N)
9. Back Home Rag 03:52 (A)
10. In a Lonely Place 01:51 (M)
11. Roswell’s Dream 08:34 (A)
12. I Should Have Stayed Dead (Theme) 05:32 (D)
13. Pullin’ the Plug 04:15 (K)
14. Pleased 04:12 (B)
15. Speckled Red’s Revenge 05:47 (K)
16. Greenwich Village Dada 02:50 (J)
17. Brother Claude Ely Ascends to Heaven 06:40 (L)
All compositions are by Allen Lowe
Personnel:
(A) Recorded 12/16/23 at Douglas Recording by Peter Karl
Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Aaron Johnson: alto sax, clarinet; Frank Lacy: trumpet; Ray Anderson: trombone; Will Goble: bass; Ray Suhy: guitar, banjo; Rob Landis: drums; Lewis Porter: piano.
(B) Recorded 12/17/23 at Douglas Recording by Peter Karl
Andy Stein: violin; Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Aaron Johnson: alto sax, clarinet; Frank Lacy: trumpet; Ray Suhy: guitar, banjo; Brian Simontacchi: trombone; Will Goble: bass; Rob Landis: drums; Lewis Porter: piano.
(C) Recorded 2/17/24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Loren Schoenberg: piano; Ethan Kogan: drums.
(D) Recorded 4/15/24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Ursula Oppens: piano; Ray Suhy: guitar, banjo; Allen Lowe: tenor sax, piano; Nick Jozwiak: bass; Ethan Kogan: drums.
(E) Recorded 4/15/24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Ray Suhy: guitar, banjo; Allen Lowe: tenor sax, piano; Nick Jozwiak: bass; Ethan Kogan: drums.
(F) Recorded 4/15/24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Ray Suhy: guitar.
(G) Recorded 5/18/24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Loren Schoenberg: piano; Kresten Osgood: drums; Colson Jimenez: bass.
(H) Recorded 5/18//24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Kresten Osgood: drums; Colson Jimenez: bass.
(I) Recorded 5/18/24 at Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Matthew Shipp: piano.
(J) Recorded 12/16/23 at Douglas Recording by Peter Karl
Elijah Shier: alto sax; Allen Lowe: tenor sax; James Paul Nadien: drums; Will Goble: bass.
(K) Recorded 11/14/23 Teaneck Sound by Dave Kowalski
Jeppe Zeeberg: piano; Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Aaron Johnson: alto sax; Will Goble: bass; Rob Landis: drums.
(L) Recorded 1/2/24 Douglas Recording by Peter Karl
Marc Ribot: guitar; Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Lewis Porter: piano; Ethan Kogan: drums.
(M) Recorded 1/2/24 Douglas Recording by Peter Karl
Huntley McSwain vocal Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Lewis Porter: piano; Will Goble: bass; James Paul Nadien: drums.
(N) Recorded December 17, 2023 at Douglas Recording by Peter Karl
Andy Stein: violin; Allen Lowe: tenor sax; Aaron Johnson: alto sax, clarinet; Frank Lacy: trumpet; Ray Suhy: guitar, banjo; Brian Simontacchi: trombone; Will Goble: bass; Rob Landis: drums; Lewis Porter: piano.
(O) [unknown recording date] Nicole Glover: tenor sax, with band.
Review:
Neither of author, composer, and saxophonist Allen Lowe’s two-volume, four-disc Louis Armstrong’s America sets contains compositions by their storied subject or tunes associated with him. Given the massive scope of Lowe’s earlier work, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. This ambitious undertaking contains 69 tracks composed by Lowe as an expression of an “older American musical aesthetic, sensibility and cultural consciousness…” As a whole, it reflects Armstrong being influenced by, and later influencing, American popular music, as seen through the lens of his life and Black cultural experience. Lowe argues that Armstrong was the first post-modernist, picking from a wide variety of musical sources (minstrel show, pop, opera, and blues, and later, the Beatles and James Brown, Ornette Coleman and Captain Beefheart) without regard for cultural, class, or racial hierarchies. Lowe’s tunes namecheck historic periods and persons from swing and ragtime through bop, modal music, and more. In his copious liner notes and track annotations, he namechecks Duke Ellington, Bo Diddley, Utah Smith, Steve Albini, Ben Harney, and others, as well as monumental historical events, including the Little Rock Nine and the appearance of Black composer William Grant Still at Carnegie Hall. Lowe uses various groups of players to accomplish this including trombonist Ray Anderson, trumpeter Frank Lacy, pianists Lewis Porter, Matthew Shipp, and Ursula Oppens, guitarists Ray Suhy and Marc Ribot, drummers Ethan Kogan and Kresten Osgood, bassist Will Goble, and various others.
LAA, Vol. 1’s opening cut, “Mr. Jenkins’ Lonely Orphans Band” (titled after the youth orchestra that gave us Jabbo Smith, Freddie Green, and Cat Anderson) easily gives way to “Aaron Copeland Has the Blues,” a languid tune that resembles a back porch lullaby with the bassist playing a 12-bar line. On “Calling All Freaks (an homage to Armstrong’s musical director Luis Russell), weds 1920s swing and jump blues to a 21st century banjo solo by Suhy. “One Two Fuck You: Steve Albini Ascends to Heaven” is an angry homage to punk from the Seeds and Ramones to Big Black. “I Should Have Stayed Dead (ballad)” is a mutant lounge-blues duet between Lowe’s sax and Shipp’s piano. Disc two’s “When Dave Schildkraut Goes Marching In” is titled after an obscure yet highly regarded sax player and based on a live rendition of the NOLA standard “Saints”; the song traverses gospel, swing, and bebop. “Back Home Rag” is modeled on bandleader James Reese Europe, who led the first recorded jazz orchestra in 1913. “Roswell’s Dream” is a loving tribute to trombonist Roswell Rudd, one of Lowe’s best friends and musical collaborators. “Pleased,” a horn-driven jam, translates the jazz-blues through the early work of James Brown. More than two-and-a-half-hours long, this set is astonishing. Its compositions, groupings, and collisions of styles and genres don’t sound remotely anachronistic filtered as they are through Lowe’s sheer musical skill and kaleidoscopic approach to jazz.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
