Louis In London is a recent album released by Verve Records and is a really enjoyable collection of Louis Armstrong’s performance with the BBC in 1968. This capture came a mere three years before the loss of this pioneer in jazz music in 1971.

The appreciation of the music is further enhanced if one watches the YouTube.com streams of this performance in London backed by his very competent multi-ethnic backup band of white, Black, and Asian -- the All-Stars. You will find Tyree Glenn on trombone; Joe Muranyi on clarinet; Marty Napoleon on piano; Buddy Catlett on bass and Danny Barcelona on drums. This wonderful music is available on vinyl, CD, and digital.

The collection was first recorded live at the BBC on July 2, 1968; and then broadcasted on September 22, 1968, as BBC TV’s “Show Of The Week. The 13-track collection was released on Friday, July 12 in vinyl, CD, and digital. Ricky Riccardi, Armstrong’s biographer, and Director of Research Collection for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, New York, contributed extensive liner notes. The publicity accompanying the release of Louis In London confidently hailed the session as Armstrong’s last great performance. And I agree with a lotta amazement too.

As I said, watching the Louis In London video stream on Youtube.com and viewing and listening to Armstrong’s charismatic performances of chart-topping favorites like “What A Wonderful World” and classic versions of such worldwide hits as “Mack The Knife” and “Hello, Dolly! where he sang in his distinctive style and played his groundbreaking trumpet solos was poignant. These songs were hits when Louis Armstrong was a constant feature on popular radio and on national TV variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show. Despite his many health issues, Armstrong was trim and great form in this performance as he yielded his hefty white handkerchief between vocalizations and trumpet solos. You witness an artist having a great time accompanied by his interplay with his All Stars.

Here’s the Tracklist:
When It’s Sleepy Time Down South
(Back Home Again) In Indiana
A Kiss To Build a Dream On
Hello, Dolly!
Mame
You’ll Never Walk Alone
Ole Miss
Blueberry Hill
Mack The Knife
Rockin’ Chair
The Bare Necessities
What a Wonderful World
When The Saints Go Marching In

Growing up in the Bay Area in the heat of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movement, I was always troubled by Armstrong’s personae in public appearances on TV. I perceived stereotypical minstrelsy groveling for crossover acceptance. This empirical, observational criticism does not cancel Armstrong’s musical, historical contributions to artistic development. More can be learned and said about Armstrong’s social and political role in American culture in those days that led into the 1960s. I will be waiting for my copy of Louis In London and to study Ricky Riccardi’s liner notes to learn more.

With the above said, I defer to the commentary by the late jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, who quoted Armstrong in the heat of the Civil Rights struggle to integrate schools in the South under violent siege by white racist Southerners while the Eisenhower Administration did nothing: “It was September 18, 1957, and Louis was in that cultural center of the Great Plains, Grand Forks, North Dakota, for a concert. ‘The way they are treating my people in the South,’ he told a reporter for the Grand Forks Herald, ‘the government can go to hell.’”

Get the record. It’s a tour de force.