It’s already started, and for the next two years the nation—for that matter, most of the solar system—will be ablaze with all manners of centennial celebrations commemorating Louis Armstrong and everything about him. I fully expect the makers of Swiss Kriss—Pops’ favorite laxative—to unveil a massive, Armstrong-related ad campaign, and frankly they’d be idiots not to.

All this is justified, of course: in this age when Demi Moore constitutes a larger-than-life personality, we’re all sorely in need of Louis Armstrong. In that context, one of the things that will benefit us most is this commemorative boxed set comprising The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings. By 2002, every one on earth will know how these sessions changed jazz. Legions of musicians and critics will speak in technicalities only Ornette Coleman could appreciate, doling out minutiae-stuffed allusions to theory and transcriptions, improvisation and scat singing, and blah, blah, blah.

Here’s all us common folk need to understand about the music: It’s fun as hell. Which is not to say these 89 tracks are nothing more than pleasant amusement—far from it. In toto, the music spans virtually every possible emotion, and the players are so crisply terrific; so inventive and sympathetic to the music and the spirit of adventure afforded by Armstrong’s burgeoning vision, that the four discs represent a musical treatise on the scope of humanity. And you can hum along! So slam these babies in the changer and press “random” and let it flow over you. Check out “Heebie Jeebies,” where Armstrong spontaneously invented scat, or compare and contrast the seminal take of “Cornet Chop Suey” with the alternative version in E-flat, or take that funeral parade walk with Louis on “St. James Infirmary.” The possibilities are pretty much nonpareil—and proof positive that these sessions are everything the theorists say they are.