Latest Release
- APR 23, 2024
- 8 Songs
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- 100th Anniversary of Jazz · 2017
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook · 1956
- Get Happy! (Bonus Tracks) · 1958
- Cheek To Cheek: The Complete Duet Recordings · 1950
- The Complete Decca Singles, Vol. 3: 1942-1949 · 1993
Essential Albums
- Producer Norman Granz recorded these singular American talents for Verve in 1956 (Ella & Louis) and 1957 (Ella & Louis Again) before he landed this absolute stunner of a double album. Recorded just months after Ella & Louis Again, Porgy & Bess also preceded Fitzgerald’s Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook of 1959 (with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle). It’s a vital addition to Fitzgerald’s Verve songbook recordings, offering an extended look at a particular slice of Gershwin, one that has proven attractive to a great many jazz artists. (Miles Davis and Gil Evans released their own, radically different Porgy and Bess in March 1959.) Ella and Pops convey a deep emotional connection to the story of what Gershwin called his “folk opera,” with Russell Garcia’s evocative and swinging large-ensemble arrangements framing their utterly dissimilar yet highly complementary voices. The reception history of Gershwin’s ambitious venture (which premiered in 1935, two years before the composer’s death at 38) is extremely complex, as it must be when a celebrated white composer attempts a tableau of African American life in the distinctly African American vernacular of blues and jazz. Black composers including Scott Joplin strove to create a distinctly American “folk opera” medium decades before Gershwin, but received little recognition. And even in the ’30s, Porgy and Bess was criticized for furthering damaging stereotypes. Armstrong, often wrongly accused of being soft on racism and civil rights, had his own painful struggle against accusations of “tomming.” Hearing him in this context inevitably raises these issues. But the music itself, in its sheer rapturous beauty, transcends them. Armstrong’s trumpet is a thing of jewel-like melodic perfection on the initial chorus of “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’,” as is Fitzgerald’s delivery of the song’s triumphant lyric “I am glad I’m alive.” Armstrong opens “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” with a heartbreaking out-of-tempo vocal, answered by Fitzgerald’s confident glide into tempo on the words “Porgy, I’s your woman now.” Her nuanced expression on the rhyming phrase “There’s no wrinkle on my brow” is sent down from the heavens. Armstrong gives a master class on swing, the feel he essentially invented back in the ’20s, in his vocal solo feature on “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing.” And Fitzgerald’s solo ballad “I Wants to Stay Here” (a.k.a. “I Loves You, Porgy”) is simply breathtaking. “My Man’s Gone Now” and the interludes “Buzzard Song” and “Oh, Doctor Jesus” are haunting, even unsettling, uncharacteristically so for the First Lady of Song. These elements and more make Porgy & Bess one of the great vocal albums of the era, and arguably of all time.
- Ella Fitzgerald was early in her historic run on Norman Granz’s Verve label when she was paired up with the great Louis Armstrong in the summer of 1956 for Ella and Louis. Their Porgy & Bess album followed soon after, as did Ella and Louis Again (all of it collected on The Complete Ella and Louis on Verve). The alchemy between the two giants is a marvel in the annals of American song. They take a simple approach that essentially can’t go wrong: beautiful expressive standards, uncluttered arrangements, virtuoso small-group backing from pianist Oscar Peterson’s working unit with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis—plus Buddy Rich on drums, as exquisitely delicate as you’ll ever hear him. Taking separate choruses or harmonising in vivacious and perfectly timed call-and-response (with Armstrong on trumpet and voice), the partners casually arrive at version after definitive version of these adored songs, pouring themselves equally into shimmering ballads (“Moonlight in Vermont”, “Stars Fell on Alabama”) and levitating midtempo swingers (“Can’t We Be Friends”, “Under a Blanket of Blue”). Fitzgerald’s masterful Armstrong impression in the last phrase of “Tenderly” captures the fun of it all.
- Ella Fitzgerald, a star of Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series since 1949, seemed to Granz an ideal fit for his new Verve label, so he signed her in 1955, luring her away from Decca in something of a coup. Right away the plan was to position her as a singer with a command of the American pop songbook, on par with a figure like Sinatra. Jazz connoisseurs admired her for her solid swing feel and breakneck scatting, her ability to go head-to-head onstage with the era's great soloists. Granz knew she possessed greater versatility, and with the Verve songbooks he sought to connect her to the widest possible audience. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook was the first of what would be eight albums in this vein, each devoted to a single composer. Porter would be followed by Rodgers & Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and finally Johnny Mercer in 1964. Most of these writers, save for Porter and Berlin, had lyricist partners (Mercer was primarily known as a lyricist, not a composer). So the Porter songbook attests not only to his timeless melodies and creative, often elongated song forms (“In the Still of the Night,” “Begin the Beguine”), but also to his peerless wordplay and wit (“Too Darn Hot,” “You’re the Top,” “Always True to You in My Fashion”). Fitzgerald nails the delivery and the fun in all of it, but also captures the tragedy and pervasive unease of a song like “Miss Otis Regrets” (played in duet with session pianist Paul Smith). Will Friedwald, in A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, argues that the first two Ella songbooks, Porter and Rodgers & Hart, suffer in comparison to those arranged by Nelson Riddle. Still, Buddy Bregman’s Porter arrangements have their charm; the band features Bud Shank, Barney Kessel, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Maynard Ferguson, and other top talent. There was a bigger-picture consideration as well, which Friedwald notes: “As the album format became more and more important to the music business, Fitzgerald was perfectly poised to assume her position as queen of the long-playing disc.” It was Norman Granz, Fitzgerald’s manager long after he sold Verve to MGM in 1960, who helped put her there.
- 2023
Artist Playlists
- Inspired scatting and vibrato from the First Lady of Song.
- The legendary jazz artist’s holiday LPs are true seasonal gems.
- Sophisticated turns with rare tunes and stylish live hits.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
- 2021
About Ella Fitzgerald
Legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald’s career began when she won Amateur Night at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater at age 17. ∙ Fitzgerald made her professional singing debut at the Harlem Opera House in 1935 with Tiny Bradshaw’s Band—a week-long engagement that led to a full-time gig with Chick Webb and His Orchestra. ∙ “A-Tisket a Tasket,” her 1938 breakthrough hit with Chick Webb and His Orchestra, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1986. ∙ Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook was the first album ever released by the legendary jazz label Verve Records, founded by her manager as a vehicle for her work. ∙ In 1959, she became the first Black artist to win a Grammy Award, receiving Best Jazz Performance, Individual, honors for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook. ∙ Her 1964 recording of “Can’t Buy Me Love” was the first cover of a Beatles hit to reach the UK Top 40. ∙ She received the National Medal of Arts in 1987 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. ∙ Adele, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, and Björk have all cited Fitzgerald as a major influence.
- HOMETOWN
- Newport News, VA, United States
- BORN
- 1917年4月25日
- GENRE
- Jazz