Potato Head Blues

Recorded in 1927 with the Hot Seven, this is the moment jazz stops being ensemble polyphony and becomes a soloist's art. The clarinet-led opening chorus is bright, almost fussy in its New Orleans intricacy, but everything is preamble to Armstrong's stop-time chorus, where the rhythm section punches out isolated beats and leaves him alone in the gaps. He fills that silence with phrases that swing across barlines, bending pitch and delaying attacks with a rhythmic confidence nobody on record had shown before. The tone is enormous and slightly grainy, a cornet sound with the heat of a shouted voice. Johnny Dodds's clarinet is reedy and vocal, Baby Dodds's woodblocks tick like a clock behind the horn. There are no lyrics; the emotional content is pure exuberance, the sound of a young musician discovering he can do anything he imagines. The title is Chicago slang, throwaway and comic, which fits music this unpretentious about its own revolution. Acoustic recording gives everything a papery midrange, but the swing survives every layer of noise. It rewards close, repeated listening — put it on when you want to hear the exact instant an art form changes direction, or when you need a three-minute reminder that virtuosity and joy are the same thing.