The Best of the Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings

1920s recordings!? This has to be the oldest album in the generator!

Don't have a whole lot to say about this, legendary trumpeter and his music is nice to listen to so good pick!

Should it be on the main list: I don't know what I'd add from Louis Armstrong but he deserves an album in the book at the minimum. Most people suggest the collaboration with Ella Fitzgerald as being his best studio work, so I guess I'd pick that instead of this, but maybe there's room for both.

Top 3 songs: Heebie Jeebies, Muskrat Ramble, Hotter Than That

I like this type of jazz in small increments. A whole album was a bit much but we definitely needed something like this on the greater list so I applaud its inclusion. 3/5

I get how revolutionary this was, but it doesn’t do much for me. 3.5

I only listened to the first disc of this. It was enjoyable enough, but I didn't need three more of them.

too long to be foisted in people .. fuck you

Favourite songs: Willie the Weeper, Weary Blues, Ory's Creole Trombone, Muskrat Ramble, Jazz Lips, Struttin' With Some Barbeque, St. James Infirmary, Beau Koo Jack, Heebie Jeebies

Least favourite songs: Alligator Crawl

4/5

Though not a true album, 1001 already kinda set a precedent by allowing Birth of the Cool, a Miles Davis comp. featuring songs mainly recorded in the 40s-- even though the book is meant to cover 1955 onward. So hell yeah, we're going to the 20s! 🎺🎺🎺

Avoiding being distracted by the degraded audio quality is a challenge (which is rich coming from the guy who put a Caretaker album on here), but memorable tunes like “St James Infirmary” and “West End Blues” elevate this assortment beyond just being an important historic artifact

I genuinely thought I was about to be listening to a nearly five hour album, but I noticed the words "the best of" thank God. Louis Armstrong is iconic in the music scene, so I understand wanting to give him some credit, but does this really count? Not only is it a compilation, but really a compilation of a compilation. It isn't an album to listen to, per se, rather just "hey, this artist deserves credit so he should be on the list!" Kinda ignores the "album" part of the list, but oh well. Won't instantly give it a one, though, that's a dumb thing to do, too. Just setting up my prior views before I say that this isn't really all that much to write home about. Was it a century ago? Probably, but now I hear this and just think "Portillo's." It's Dixieland jazz, nothing more, nothing less. Is it an important milestone in modern music? Of course! Is it a very good album? No, not really.

Hard to sum up in a star rating. Runs into the same issue as a lot of the pre-1960 albums from the original list, where it's *really* not meant to be listened to in the same kinds of settings & contexts as I tend to play an album... but also Louis Armstrong was an absolute titan, and deserves recognition for all time.

I love the way that as soon as this begins to get a bit stale, Louis starts singing and it's like sunlight pouring into your soul.

It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that this music is nearly 100 years old. Recorded between 1925 and 1929 in Chicago, these tracks don’t just mark a pivotal moment in jazz history, it's the birth of modern popular music as we know it, from rock, pop, soul, and basically any genre that values personal expression and musical conversation.

a true and thorough jazz blues time.

More a collection of songs rather than an album, but Armstrong is such a huge influence on music how is he

What is now foundational was once revolutionary.