Louis Armstrong's Greatest Hits

Assembled by Columbia in the late 1960s, this compilation gathers recordings Louis Armstrong made for the label across roughly four decades, from his 1955-56 remakes of Hot Five staples like 'West End Blues' and 'Struttin' With Some Barbecue' to his mid-1960s All-Stars concert performances. Armstrong, who had already reshaped jazz as a soloist and vocalist in the 1920s with the Hot Five and Hot Seven, spent his later career as a globally beloved entertainer, and this set captures that later persona fronting his working small group, the All-Stars. The centerpiece is 'Mack the Knife,' the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht theme from 'The Threepenny Opera' that Armstrong had turned into a hit a decade earlier and which remained one of his signature vocal numbers. 'Cabaret,' recorded in 1966, shows Armstrong still mining contemporary Broadway material for his songbook late in his career. The collection blends the trumpet virtuosity that made him the music's most influential soloist with the warm, gravelly singing that made him a household name far beyond jazz circles, and it stands as an accessible summary of why Armstrong is regarded as one of the central figures in American popular music. Critically, such Armstrong compilations were valued less as artistic statements than as durable, well-loved samplers of a titan's most enduring recordings.