Yesterday I went to an awayday at the education dept at Oxford. I caught the earlier coach so there was time to go into Blackwell's music and I got the Oxford Recorded Jazz History on Louis Armstrong's Hot 5 and Hot 7 recordings. There was a new book devoted to In C but it cost �30 which I thought was too much - I can t find it on Amazon UK but the reviews on the US site are very positive. A couple of new pieces went up yesterday - on this site and the classil page. The awayday was about apprenticeships - very much the topic of the month. I bumped into Nick who used to work for me 20 years ago - he is still in the dept working in this area. I am listening to remixes of Lamb. The lunch at the awayday was very pleasant - also the coach ride there through the late autumn countryside and of course Oxford Town. We are at 88 in the RN London classical chart and have used up our sallocation of listeners

The Louis Armstrong book tackles the issue of how LA's exemplary style set the standard for solo improvisation in jazz between 1924 and 1927. It is good on the relevance of the context particularly vaudeville. Laurence mailed.