For those unaware, Louis �Satchmo� Armstrong devoted his life to the cause of happiness, as he once put it, giving the gift of joy whenever he put his trumpet to his lips. Since his passing, his music has become synonymous with the holiday season.

Louis Wishes You a Cool Yule is the first ever Louis Armstrong Christmas record (I know, right!), and this release includes a previously unheard recording of his reading of A Visit from St. Nicholas, with fellow New Orleans icon Sullivan Fortner providing a gorgeous musical under bed.

�Louis Armstrong�s first album of holiday-associated songs is an auspicious aural example of why he was a man for all seasons, singing and playing his Promethean trumpet in the cause of happiness,� said Wynton Marsalis, president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF).

�Whether you�re seven or 70, these evergreen selections featuring the great composer/arranger Benny Carter, and the incomparable vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Velma Middleton are illuminated by Pops� down-home vocals. His reading of �The Night Before Christmas,� with my New Orleans homeboy, Sullivan Fortner on piano, is a swinging Crescent City Christmas card. If anybody can bring joy to the world, Louis Armstrong can!�

1. Cool Yule
2. Winter Wonderland
3. I�ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (W/ Ella Fitzgerald)
4. �Zat You Santa Claus?
5. Christmas in New Orleans
6. White Christmas
7. Christmas Night in Harlem
8. Baby, It�s Cold Outside (W/ Velma Middleton)
9. Moments to Remember
10. What a Wonderful World
11. Reading of �A Visit from St. Nicholas� (with Sullivan Fortner, Piano Accompaniment)

Well, if you are a long time Louis Armstrong fan/collector, you more than likely already have the six Decca singles from the 1950s � and probably the two duets (one with Ella and one with his All-Stars vocalist Velma Middleton - but I�ll bet you haven�t heard the closing track: the poem A Visit From St . Nicholas (although you�ll know it better as The Night Before Christmas).

Known for sitting in his home and making reel-to-reel tape recordings of his thoughts, this quite wondrous seasonal outing opens on the vibrant scat of the titular Cool Yule and the delightfully languishing Winter Wonderland and then lovingly brings us the buoyant I�ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (featuring Ella Fitzgerald), the finger-snapping �Zat You Santa Claus? and the achingly earnest Christmas in New Orleans.

Up next is the luxurious, sweet-to-the-tooth White Christmas and the throaty elegance of Christmas Night in Harlem and they are in turn backed by the jovially harmonious Baby, It�s Cold Outside (featuring Velma Middleton), the regally embroidered Moments to Remember, the collection rounding out on the always-delightful What a Wonderful World, and as noted, for this release, Producer Ken Drucker had pianist Sullivan Fortner add a newly-created accompaniment to an absolutely heartwarming reading of A Visit from St. Nicholas.

Louis Wishes You A Cool Yule, available digitally, on CD, red vinyl and a limited edition vinyl picture disc, collects nearly the entirety of Armstrong�s holiday output and presents the recordings as a cohesive body of work for the first time, marking his first-ever official Christmas album.

www.louisarmstronghouse.org

Louis Armstrong - A Visit From St. Nicholas (�Twas The Night Before Christmas)