New holiday music! Louis Armstrong Wishes You a Cool Yule

Ho - Ho - Satchamo!

Christmas and Louis Armstrong would seem to go hand-in-hand - Who amongst us has not celebrated past holidays with all of those classic, Firestone tire records with all of those great personalities & voices spinning on the turntable as we decorated the tree & danced the night away?

Unlike his peers of that era like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the rest, he never made a Christmas album — until now. This was created by putting his few yuletide singles alongside pieces that express a similar sentiment and it turns out to be a wonderful, nostalgic look back at some of his best holiday tunes.

The eleven tracks found here include six singles from the 1950s, including "Cool Yule," "Christmas Night in Harlem" and the swinging "'Zat You, Santa Claus?" There are two duets: one with Velma Middleton on "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and the other with the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald on "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm." There is just a bit of filler to make this whole proceeding an album-length event by including the tracks "Moments to Remember," and "What A Wonderful World," but both of those songs do share some of the sentiment of the season so we can gladly accept their inclusion here.

As it turns out, the American trumpeter and singer had a bittersweet relationship with the holiday season. He didn’t celebrate it during childhood because he began working at such an early age. It wasn't until he was forty that he got his first Christmas tree (and seemed to be so enchanted by it that he took the decorated tree out with him on tour!).

But they say Louie made every day seem like Christmas and this music is a testimonial to that. The album closes with a previously hard-to-find track. A few weeks before he passed, in July of 1971, Armstrong turned on the tape recorder in his home in Queens NY and recorded a spoken-word version of Samuel Clement Moore's poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" aka "The Night Before Christmas." The recitation is underscored by Sullivan Fortner's newly recorded piano accompaniment.

That finale provides a poignant end to this record - and is bound to leave a tear in the eye along with fond memories of this great American treasure!

Here are a couple of classic tracks along with that spoken-word gem: