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This article posits that the recorded work of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles between 1925 and 1928 constitutes the most significant evolutionary leap in the history of jazz, marking its transition from a collective folk-based art form to a modernist soloist’s medium. It argues that Armstrong’s innovations were not merely stylistic but fundamentally reconfigured the jazz aesthetic, establishing the primacy of the improvising virtuoso and reorienting the music’s rhythmic foundation from a 2/4 ragtime-derived pulse to a 4/4 swing feel. Through a close musical analysis of key recordings, this article examines the technical specifics of…