We’re about to enter the Armstrong centennial, so get ready for an onslaught of tributes, reissues with rare and obscure material, and every other type of “concept recording” imaginable, ranging from the wonderfully illuminating to the unendurably bad. Kenny G’s faux duet with Satchmo (“And I think to myself, what a horribly schmaltzy world”) was a warning shot. These are scary times we live in, folks.

Before diving headfirst into the post-modern retrospective orgy, it would behoove us to get our bearings by listening to the original recordings which made Armstrong famous, and which changed American music forever. This 4-CD box set, recently released on JSP records, contains the complete collection of recordings made by Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven groups in 1920s, newly remastered by John R. T. Davies.

Here we find Armstrong’s first hit songs, “Heebie Jeebies,” which popularized scat singing, and “Cornet Chop Suey,” which introduced the revolutionary concept of lead instrumental solos, as well as timeless classics such as “Muskrat Ramble,” “Wild Man Blues,” “Potato Head Blues,” “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue” and “West End Blues.” There’s also more obscure material like “Yes! I’m In The Barrel” (which was slang for being poor—you couldn’t afford clothes, so you wore a barrel instead), “The King of the Zulus” (with a Jamaican character interrupting Kid Ory’s trombone solo to ask for an order of chitlins and offering to play one of his “native jazz tunes”), “Irish Black Bottom” (with Armstrong singing “I was born in Ireland”), and seldom heard alternate takes of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Mahogany Hall Stomp.”

Tracks are in chronological order starting with the very first session on November 12, 1925, allowing listeners to follow Armstrong’s development during this, his peak creative period, as he emerged from the polyphonic New Orleans-style ensemble to become the first lead soloist in jazz and a blazing musical innovator. The last two disks contain material from later in the ’20, with recordings by Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five, Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, and Carroll Dickerson’s Savoyagers. Superb liner notes by Charles Fox on the first two discs, and then by Sally-Ann Worsfold on the last two, offer detailed insight into the circumstances surrounding all these sessions.

The sound quality, while not quite as good as on Louis Armstrong: Great Original Performances 1923-1931 (part of Robert Parker’s “Jazz Classics in Digital Stereo” series, which recreates early jazz in a live stereo environment with impressive results), can still be rated as excellent, allowing the original exuberance of the music to jump out at you with minimal interference. Ultimately, the comprehensiveness of this collection is what sets it apart.