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Ella Fitzgerald

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The Ella Fitzgerald Collection
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Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book - VOL. 2
Released: Aug 27, 1956
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Ella Sings Songs from "Let No Man Write My Epitaph"
Released: Apr 14, 1960
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This album is a rare gem, a 1960 duo session featuring Ella Fitzgerald singing classic ballads, which she performed in the film Let No Man Write My Epitaph, with pianist Paul Smith as her sole... Continue[+]

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Love Letters From Ella
Released: Jul 31, 2007
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To celebrate what would have been Ella Fitzgeralds 90th birthday, Starbucks Entertainment and Concord Records are co-releasing Love Letters From Ella, a collection of never-before-released love... Continue[+]

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The Very Best of the Harold Arlen Songbook
Released: Jul 24, 2007
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Cole Porter was known to write withering letters to artists who got too creative with his songs; the same offense would send Richard Rodgers into high dudgeon. But Harold Arlens true loves were jazz and the blues, and he loved it when an artist of Ella Fitzgeralds stature got hold of his songs and took flight.

The sixth volume of Ella's historic Song Book series was devoted to Arlen (1905-1986)  a composer who wrote just as comfortably for the all-black revues at the Cotton Club as he did for The Wizard of Oz. This cantors son from Buffalo, born Hyman Arluck, spent seventeen years as a Hollywood songwriter, and even longer as a composer of Broadway scores (St. Louis Woman, House of Flowers, Bloomer Girl). But jazz was a lifelong magnet for Arlen, and it informed almost everything he wrote. As a youth hed watched ragtime blossom into Dixieland, and the rhythms tantalized him; meanwhile, his fathers singing whet a taste for improvisation in his son. Arlen quit high school to play ragtime piano in saloons; around 1924 he brought his own jazz band into Manhattan.

Ella Fitzgerald recorded her two-LP tribute to Arlen in 1960. It came midway through a series that turned an esteemed singers singer into a household word. At a time when TV was only beginning to embrace black artists, there alongside Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore and Jack Paar was Ella  a finger-snapping, motherly songbird who, back in 1938, had swung her way into the countrys heart with A-Tisket, A-Tasket. Well after she reached middle age, her voice still had a bell-like purity and the insouciance of a child at play. She also had an ear that hardly any horn player could top. When bebop emerged in the mid-40s, Fitzgerald entered its top ranks, unleashing a fireworks display of scatted sixteenth notes and flatted fifths.

For the Arlen Song Book, Granz saw the need for a freer approach. He brought in Billy May, a swing arranger who had worked for Glenn Miller and, more recently, had served as maestro on Frank Sinatras smash album, Come Fly with Me. Granz insisted that May leave room for Ella and some of the players to stretch out. Happily, one can hear, within the first-rate L.A. studio orchestra, the cool alto sax of Benny Carter and the piano of Lou Levy, one of Fitzgeralds best accompanists. Years later, May admitted that, like other busy arrangers of his day, he had hired ghostwriters to do at least some of the charts. But Mays brand of mellow swing must have been easy to mimic, because every track bears his stamp.

Arlen wrote "Blues In The Night" for a film of the same name in 1941; the lyricist was Johnny Mercer, his collaborator, on and off, until 1959. "Blues In The Night" is the only true twelve-bar blues Arlen ever wrote. In this epic version, Fitzgerald and the orchestra evoke a countryside whose every road holds nothing but disillusion. Some of Arlens darkest torch songs  notably "Stormy Weather" and "One For My Baby"  are here too. Ballads of that type were thought to be all wrong for the sunny-voiced Ella. But she found her own way with them; as sung here, those wrist-slashers sound like youthful expressions of a first broken heart.

Ella was never happier, of course, than when she was sailing on top of a swinging groove; in "That Old Black Magic" and "Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive" her joy sounds uncontainable. By comparison, Over The Rainbow brought out this great singers well-known insecurity: in her mind, she could never top Judy Garland. But even if Garlands pathos was out of her reach, Ellas wistfulness touches the heart.

Billy May recalled Ella as always very sweet and cooperative, in the studio. Arlen had much more to say: She stands alone while almost everyone else is derivative. Her voice, her style, are pure unadulterated American, her phrasing impeccable  she improvises playfully and with more fluidity than most instrumentalists. Rarely would he get a lovelier salute than when the First Lady of Song smiled upon him in this album.

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The Very Best of the Irving Berlin Songbook
Released: Jul 24, 2007
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By 1958, when Ella Fitzgerald paid Irving Berlin the tribute you now hold, the songwriter, like Fitzgerald, had lived an incomparable rags-to-riches success story. Throughout a fifty-year career, this Russian-Jewish immigrant had penned the soundtrack to much of American life. Al Jolson sang Blue Skies in the first-ever musical talkie, The Jazz Singer; God Bless America helped fortify the country in the darkest days of World War II. White Christmas and Easter Parade were synonymous with the holidays they celebrated. These and other triumphs made Berlin one of the richest men in New York, his adopted hometown.

It was in 1934 that Fitzgerald  a homely teenager from Newport News, Virginia  got her start by winning an Apollo Theater amateur contest. From there, she was hired by the Harlem bandleader Chick Webb. Together they swung a nursery rhyme, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, into the number-one position on the pop charts, where it stayed for ten weeks. From then on, her record label, Decca, kept feeding her novelties and swing tunes; rarely did she get to sing as a mature, worldly woman. Fitzgerald knew too well that hardly anyone regarded her as a romantic or sexual object. With a happy love life eluding her (she was divorced twice), she longed to at least sing about it in beautiful ballads.

The Song Books enabled her to do just that. Launched in 1956, the series  which celebrated eight of Americas greatest songwriters  was the brainchild of Norman Granz, her manager and the president of Verve Records. Fitzgeralds earlier albums had sold only modestly, and Granz wanted his number-one client to reach the masses. And she did: the project helped make her every bit as popular as Sinatra.

With her impeccable sense of rhythm, Fitzgerald was a natural for songs about dancing, a Berlin specialty. "Cheek to Cheek" brings a smile to her voice as she sings about sailing off to heaven in the arms of a dreamboat. In Follow the Fleet (1936), Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had danced sinuously to "Let's Face the Music and Dance," a haunting plea to grab the moment before storm clouds burst. It brings out a hint of darkness in the normally sunny-sounding Fitzgerald.

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We All Love Ella: Celebrating The First Lady of Song
Released: Jun 5, 2007
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SENSATIONAL ASSEMBLAGE OF STARS PRAISE THE BELOVED ELLA FITZGERALD WE ALL LOVE ELLA: CELEBRATING THE FIRST LADY OF SONG JUNE 5 ON VERVE RECORDS A sensational assemblage of stars honors the... Continue[+]

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SENSATIONAL ASSEMBLAGE OF STARS PRAISE THE BELOVED ELLA FITZGERALD

WE ALL LOVE ELLA: CELEBRATING THE FIRST LADY OF SONG JUNE 5 ON VERVE RECORDS A sensational assemblage of stars honors the incomparable songstress Ella Fitzgerald on the Phil Ramone-produced We All Love Ella: Celebrating The First Lady Of Song (June 5, Verve Records). These stars love of Ella shines through on their musical performances, but they also cite Ellas artistry and music as moving and influential to their own careers.

You can almost hear Natalie Cole smile as she sings Ellas famous hit A Tisket A Tasket. This was the first jazz song Cole ever learned and she practiced it so she would sound exactly like Ella. When I was seven, I was singing like a 30 or 40 year old woman, she laughs. k.d. lang was 20 when she bought her first Ella record and studied it and studied it and studied it...from then I studied her as a musician. langs sultry and subdued Angel Eyes is a beautiful tribute to Ellas original. Legendary producer Phil Ramone says, There is something magical about doing the work of Ella Fitzgerald that gives you a tremendous painting to start with. Diana Krall calls Fitzgerald the greatest improviser, jazz scat singera completely natural and amazing woman.  She offers a tender rendition of Dream a Little Dream with celebrated pianist Hank Jones for the record. Dianne Reeves highlights Ellas sunny side, saying, The biggest influence she had on me was there was so much joy in her singing. She absolutely loved singing and you could feel it, a mood thats apparent on Reeves version of Oh, Lady Be Good.

Breakout singer Ledesi said Ella made Blues in the Night seem so easy. Although she discovered it was harder than she thought, she delivers a remarkable performance.

In Ella Fitzgeralds lifetime, she won 13 GRAMMY awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her catalog continues to be as popular as ever and her iconic stature is undiminished. Fitzgerald would have turned 90 on April 25, 2007. We All Love Ella: A Celebration of the First Lady of Song' is produced by hitmaker Phil Ramone and filled with passionate performances of classics made famous by Ella and sung by world-renowned singers and break-out stars Michael Bubl,0020Natalie Cole, Etta James, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Ledesi, Dianne Reeves, Linda Ronstadt and Lizz Wright.

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Ella Fitzgerald Albums, Ella Fitzgerald Songs

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