Louis Armstrong: West End Blues

"I felt," said trumpeter Max Kaminsky after hearing Louis Armstrong's leadoff cadenza, "as if I had stared into the sun's eye." He wasn't alone. Two weeks before, Louis's mentor Joe Oliver had waxed this tribute to a cherished venue along New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain. Nobody was blinded. But when the King's heir apparent traded his trusty cornetbetter suited to traditional ensemble jazzfor the more penetrating trumpet, 26-year-old Armstrong's clarion call set off a solar flare that dazzles to this day. By itself, either Earl Hines's piano solo or Louis's wordless vocal obbligato behind clarinetist Jimmy Strong would make this track memorable. The trumpeter makes it immortal.