"Satch Plays Fats: A Tribute to the Immortal Fats Waller by Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars"

"Satch Plays Fats" is sundown music. I've never listened to it before 7p.m. at the earliest. I've noticed more people in Denver out on their porches and patios in the last week and it would be perfect blasting through an open window, as well as in dinner parties or general bullshit sessions with your neighbors at some future date.

There are no liner notes, just a back cover with some adorably 1955 musings from the album's producer, the jazz/rock/pop God George Avakian. He says that Waller's songs "were invariably written with simplicity, charm, and an over-all perfection" so that it is "easy to remember a Fats Waller song, but it is also easy to think that they are no trouble to write." This is correct. I hear "Blue Turning Grey Over You" and "I've got a Feeling I'm Falling" in my head at least once a week.

The solo at 3:07 always slays me. I'll always fight it, but I'm also always going to think of all music through rock music, and that solo feels like a quietLOUDquiet guitar solo from Joey Santiago on a Pixies song. Satch starts with the lovely melody in the first two minutes of the song, then he sings one verse and almost goes back into the melody (the band drops out) but then goes right into the second verse, and at the end of the second verse you're ready for the third verse, he's baited you, but instead he unleashes a full open trumpet solo. Or in Avakian's words: "This extraordinary performance is all Armstrong--a muted trumpet solo, an impassioned vocal, and an open trumpet solo."

There's something both meditative and completely unhinged about this whole album. I think I like it at night because it organizes my emotions from the day, energizes them, and puts them to bed.