Latest Release
- SEP 13, 2024
- 13 Songs
- What a Wonderful World · 1967
- Cheek To Cheek: The Complete Duet Recordings · 1950
- Satchmo Serenades · 1950
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Satchmo Serenades · 1951
- Ella and Louis · 1956
- Porgy and Bess · 1957
- Ella and Louis Again · 1957
- Hello, Dolly! (Remastered) · 1964
Essential Albums
- Virtually the entire ensuing history of jazz springs from the timeless tracks on this distillation of a four-album box set collecting Armstrong's small-group recordings from 1926 to 1928. "Heebie Jeebies" contains one of the earliest examples of scat singing; Armstrong's solo introduction to "West End Blues" marks a joyful moment of rhythmic liberation; and his elegant, idea-drenched trumpet solo in "Potato Head Blues" gave Woody Allen something to live for in Manhattan.
- 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 harmonizing 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.
Artist Playlists
- Meet the man who built jazz brick by brick.
- Good humor and virtuosic invention from a master of many styles.
Appears On
- King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
About Louis Armstrong
Born in 1901 in New Orleans, the cradle of jazz, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong is the most important figure to emerge from the musically rich city. He first made his mark in the band led by cornetist Joe Oliver, whom he followed to Chicago in 1922, cutting his first records with the group the following year. Armstrong’s growing fame and feverish creativity led him to form his own groups, The Hot Fives and The Hot Sevens, between 1925 and 1928. Early on he embraced the contrapuntal style of early jazz mastered by Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, but he soon pioneered the jazz solo, an extended improvisation gliding through the chord changes of each tune. His devastating technical mastery eclipsed that of his peers, and his brilliantly melodic, inherently bluesy, and rhythmically inventive playing paved the way to the swing quality that so largely defines the music. He used his raspy, avuncular singing to forge a second weapon on par with his horn work in both originality and influence, transforming scat singing into an art form, and rode it to mainstream success. By the ’30s he was a pop star, touring in Europe, appearing in Hollywood movies, and leading a buoyant big band. Adapting to the declining appeal of swing orchestra, in 1947 Armstrong debuted a smaller, more nimble all-star band. He endured on the pop charts despite changing tastes, scoring pop hits in the ’50s (“Mack the Knife”) and the ’60s (“Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World”). Given his iconic status and international fame, he was enlisted as a cultural ambassador by the U.S. State Department. He died in 1971, but the magnetism and power of his work remain undiminished, the product of a lifelong elevation of jazz’s bawdy roots into one of America’s finest cultural achievements.
- GENRE
- Jazz