Louis “Satchmo’ Armstrong not only was the supreme musician and ultimate showman of the 20th century, he also lived the kind of blessed life where fudging his birthdate by little more than a year (from August 1901 to July 4, 1900) both served the purposes of amplifying his myth and buying him an extended centennial. And, really, no one could have deserved a year-long, turn-of-the-century celebration more. On the other hand, Louis’ blessing has often been overly-exaggerated, not at the hands of musicians and the general listening public, but in the interests of promoting both jazz criticism and record sales. For example, as extraordinary an instrumentalist as Pops was—that’s what the musicians call him, “Pops”—there has been a tendency to lionize him as a virtuoso soloist, very much along the lines of European music-history appreciation, rather than the multi-talented leader of a band playing music firmly established, and groundbreakingly so, in the invention ensemble improvisation.

During this extended Louis Armstrong centennial, therefore, the commercial air around us no doubt will be filled with all manner of Satchmo hoopla, lots of it attached to countless tributes and archival reissues, such as the upcoming set being prepared by Columbia Records of the music that established Louis’ career in the late 1920s, the so-called Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (“so-called” because the actual number of musicians tended to vary quite a bit). The music is, in fact, truly amazing, but how many casual listeners are going to be served by an expensively produced, 4-CD, 89-track archival package? It’s not really in the spirit of Pops himself, either, who definitely would have endorsed this fine, mid-priced, 15-track selection of most of his key, late-’20s numbers, programmed not for scholarly study but for a casual fan’s extreme listening pleasure.

Here is Pops’ most famous solo (memorialized by jazz fan Woody Allen in the ending to Manhattan) on “Potato Head Blues,” the first recorded scat singing of “Heebie Jeebies,” the beautiful, stop-time choruses of “Cornet Chop Suey,” old-timey vocal contributions from Edward “Kid” Ory, the enduring Hoagy Carmichael (on his own “Rocking Chair,” which he and Louis turned into a pure jazz elixir) and May Alix on the forever classic “Big Butter & Egg Man,” incredible backing performances from Louis’ own contingent of mainly New Orleans musicians, plus guest shots from pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines and Lonnie Johnson, the largely unheralded pioneer of the jazz guitar (on the truly sizzling “Hotter Than That”). Here’s “Muskrat Ramble,” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” and lots of those good, old, vinyl-record scratchy sounds. Most of all, though, what’s here is the amazing generosity of the spirit of a boy who rose from poverty in the working class neighborhoods of New Orleans to become an ambassador for America’s musical inventiveness both throughout this enormous country and around the entire world. The wonder of Pops, really, is that he played almost purely for pleasure, and if we’re going to honor his memory, it naturally ought to be in that spirit.

Just under an hour’s worth of the essence of Pops at a price almost anyone can afford? Now that’s what I call a centennial celebration worthy of the greatest jazz musician of all time.