Satchmo's adventures in the 1940s are dealt with in this box set, from big band sides, via duets with Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan and The Mills Brothers to the classic live recordings from the Town Hall and Symphony Hall with the All Stars. A fascinating era in the career of one of the greatest jazz men of the 20th century. As a trumpeter he was without peer, until the rise of Dizzy Gillespie during the forties there was no jazz trumpeter who did not stem from Satchmo and even after that every trumpeter has been at least indirectly indebted to him.