RSSElla Fitzgerald [extended]
- Love Songs: Best of the Verve Song Books [Verve, 1996] A
- Ken Burns Jazz [Verve, 2000] A+
- The Best of the Concert Years [Pablo, 2003] A
- Ella & Louis [Ober Entertainment/20th Century Masterworks, 2021] A+
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Consumer Guide Reviews:
Love Songs: Best of the Verve Song Books [Verve, 1996]
The third hour-long budget album PolyGram has constructed from that 16-CD box you passed on seems much the best to me. It doesn't limit a swinging chick to ballads, or apply her automatic sophistication to lyrics whose brilliance verges on silly, like "Miss Otis Regrets" or "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." Because the emotional complexities love songs deal in are known to us and assumed by her, we're free to ignore her questionable interpretive powers and luxuriate in an instrument as pleasurable as Sinatra's or Jones's. I'm not just talking subtle force and supple range--those you can pick up in the gym. I love its verve and its reserve, and can't get over the character that grains but never roughens its lissome clarity. A
Ken Burns Jazz [Verve, 2000]
Suffering and subtlety may be the way of truth, but though I've revered Billie Holiday for 40 years, they're not the only way. First time through this rocket ship of an argument for Fitzgerald as blithe spirit and improvising musician, I was put off by the opener, her first and biggest hit, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket." It was so silly, so girly. But as she floated through the closer--the almost as flighty "Shiny Stockings," once again with words by the artiste--it dawned on me that she sounded just as girly at 45. And that was 1963, by which time she had outscatted everybody this side of King Louis, defined the pop canon, and ebulliently declared to her impeccably credentialed jazz combo, "I wanna rock, I wanna roll." Girly was so much her gift that it's too bad there isn't anything later--she was still making young records past 60. There were many things she didn't understand--that's why the token "blues" is a pop song about blues. But there was plenty Billie didn't understand too. Ella outlived her on the difference. A+
The Best of the Concert Years [Pablo, 2003]
With minor exceptions not named Cassandra or Sarah (or Carmen or Betty), I find just two jazz singers of consistent interest as melodic improvisers and sonic producers. Ella did sink to shtick on the four albums boiled down here, but on this selection the live format turns a pop interpreter into a jazz musician. She's 54 on the first two tracks and 35 on the next six with little change in clarity or sprightliness. But by the last five, when she's 65, her voice has thickened drastically, and to compensate she overdoes it like her lessers--flatting lines, distorting words, laying on gutturals and vibrato. Listen three times and you'll hang on every phrase. A
Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong: Ella & Louis [Ober Entertainment/20th Century Masterworks, 2021]
Now 68 years old in the latest and probably last of this legendary masterpiece's several manifestations, this 78-minute 2021 release differs from Verve's vinyl original by comprising not a mere 11 selections but 16 like a good little CD should. Hence the original song sequence is reprised in order from "Can't We Be Friends" to "April in Paris" only to be followed by "Autumn in New York," "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," "Love Is Here to Stay," and the irresistibly explosive, historically undeniable closer "Stompin' at the Savoy"—all five, I'll note for what it's worth, far more classic than "Under a Blanket of Blue," the only obscurity and the nearest thing to a duff song here, which of course is perfectly OK even so for those of us who can always make room for another forgotten treasure. Both these great artists' voices are by now so familiar that I'll do no more than mention what a nice contrast Armstrong's gravel-strewn humor makes to Fitzgerald's warm precision—which complements his trumpet exactly as it should. And both of their reputations are so stellar that I'm assuming that anybody who doesn't own one version or another of this titanic work of art will rectify this oversight posthaste—and that many could happily do with another. A+