Ella in Five
Over her 50 year career, Ella Fitzgerald recorded some 200 albums and over 2000 songs. Deciding where to start in her catalog can therefore be a daunting decision for a first time listener. Here are five essential albums and ten songs to discover (or re-discover) the First Lady of Song.
Note: this is an accompaniment piece to my longform essay about Ella’s life: “To Ella with Love”
#1: Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife
(1960) Spotify | Apple Music
Perhaps the best way to experience Ella for the first time is through a live album, and what better choice than one of the greatest live albums ever recorded, Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife. Recorded in Deutschlandhalle, Berlin on February 13, 1960, Ella in Berlin is an electrifying album in so many ways. Here Ella is 43 years old and in total command of her instrument and repertoire. Her improvising powers, in particular, are unimpeachable in this recording and it is the last two numbers (“Mack the Knife” and “How High the Moon”) that steal the show, immediately sealing Ella in Berlin as a bona fide classic.
Two-song Spotlight:
Mack the Knife - In concert, Ella would often change her sets at a whim. On stage on the Deutschlandhalle, 15 mins until the end of the show, Ella decided to tackle “Mack the Knife”, the pop standard with the rather grisly lyrics written by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht for their operetta, The Threepenny Opera, which just the year before, in 1959, had become an enormous hit for Bobby Darin. Sensing that the song would be a winner for the crowd, Ella and her band begin to play the song on the fly, only for Ella to forget the lyrics midway. For the next two minutes, she improvises—to the effusive delight of the audience—making up lyrics as she goes along before launching into a pitch-perfect imitation of Louis Armstrong. It is magic and kismet in five minutes. Spotify
How High the Moon - Ella frequently performed “How High the Moon” in concert but this is probably the best version she ever recorded. Just over over 8 minutes long, “How High the Moon” is a bravura improvisational performance. Initially the song is played pretty straight—a very lovely, very swingy rendition. However about minute in, Ella begins move beyond the song’s margins until she completely abandons the lyrics to do a scat of such speed and velocity, it’s hard to keep on top of the melodic troughs and discursive turns as a listener, much more to imagine what it would be like to perform. A total injection of energy by a virtuoso performer. Spotify
#2: Ella Fitzgerald sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book
(1956) Spotify | Apple Music
This is the album that started it all for me at age 11. Because Rodgers’ work with Hart is slightly more obscure than his work with Hammerstein, the Ella Fitzgerald sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book is a wonderful album to discover familiar, but also new material. Rodgers’ work is as melodic as ever, but more aligned to the jaunty jazz sound so popular in the 1920s and 30s. Hart’s lyrics too are more urbane, more New York centric, more generalist and more inclined to be cynical than Hammerstein’s own. There’s so many great songs in this album. I adore “To Keep My Love Alive” (a blithe ditty about a merry widow who has a propensity to lose husbands in the most suspect of circumstances), as well as “I Wish I Were in Love Again” and Ella’s definitive cover of “The Lady is a Tramp”. A favourite (rather) obscure number is “Mountain Greenery”, which has among the most delightful rhymes that Hart ever wrote (While you love your lover/let blue sky be your coverlet/when it rains we’ll laugh at the weather). A caveat: skip “Give it back to the Indians” entirely (it’s extremely racist).
Two-song Spotlight:
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: At 7 minutes, Ella sings the full lyrics of this classic number from Rodgers and Hart’s 1940 musical, Pal Joey. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" sung by an older women about a younger man who is less than constant in his attentions to her, is knowing and sexy, running the gamut from rueful elation to resigned exasperation. In a sort of example of life imitating art, a year after she recorded this album, it was reported that Ella had secretly eloped with Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo, but that the marriage failed to come to fruition when Larsen was sent to jail in Sweden, accused of swindling a young woman who he was also previously engaged to. One can’t help speculate that perhaps “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” was more informed by Ella’s own personal experiences than meets the eye. Spotify
My Funny Valentine: I love the ironies of this song. Instead of waxing lyrical about your lover’s best qualities, “My Funny Valentine” enumerates all the things that make your lover physically wanting in the eyes of the world—yet you wouldn’t change them for anything. (Is you figure less than Greek/is your mouth a little weak/when you open it to speak/are you smart?). Ella’s voice is particularly velvety and resonant, the sugar in the song’s slightly wistful lyric. Spotify
#3: Ella Fitzgerald sings the Duke Ellington Songbook
(1957) Spotify | Apple Music
The only song book that features music from a Black composer and the only album produced where Ella collaborated directly with, and performed alongside, the composer, Ella Fitzgerald sings the Duke Ellington Songbook is arguably the most exciting and vivid of the eight songbooks. Here you feel that Ella is engaging with something entirely new and present and at the forefront of mid-century jazz—rather than reflecting a gilded musical theatre past written by White musicians for White audiences. Most of all, there’s a visceral sense of Ella’s joy at working with Duke, that one can’t help be infected with too when listening to this album.
Two-song Spotlight:
Take the “A” Train: The “A” train refers to the line that connects Harlem in the north of Manhattan to Queens, south in Brooklyn: a journey between two distinct bedrocks of Black culture. The song is 90% improvisation and scat and so, so playful: one of the key examples in the album where it sounds like Ella is knitted to the ensemble itself, where it feels like she has literally becomes a horn instrument rather than a feature singer. Spotify
I’m Beginning to see the Light: One of my favourite Ella songs, ever. It’s one of the more straightforward covers of Ellington’s songs but if you try to recreate “I’m Beginning to see the Light” you’ll find that the arrangement is deceptively in its apparently simplicity—it’s rather complicated melodically and Ella does some brilliantly, subtle amendments that reflect her innate sense of pitch. Spotify
#4: Ella at the Shrine
(1956/Re-released in 2018) Spotify | Apple Music
Recorded at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on 21 January 1956, and believed to be the record label Verve’s first ever live recording, Ella at the Shrine was lost for more than 50 years until it was discovered and subsequently released in 2018. And what a discovery. The whole set is only 20 mins long but is full of gems: a gorgeously swingy “S’ Wonderful”, a dazzling “Lullaby of Birdland” and a consummately spectacular “Air Mail Special”. A perfect introduction to Ella.
Two-song Spotlight:
Glad to be Unhappy: “Glad to be Unhappy” is one of the more obscure songs in Ella’s repertoire and is given a beautifully tender treatment here. Another of Rodgers and Hart’s ironic ditties, “Glad to be Unhappy” is about the pain and pleasure of unrequited love: a whole song about that old adage that it is better to have loved and lost etc. The song is little more than 2 mins long but a perfect balance of wry and wistful. I listen to it often. Spotify
Air Mail Special: One of the best things about Ella at the Shrine is how well the audience’s elation at Ella’s performance is captured in the recording, especially at the end of final number of the set, “Air Mail Special”. You can hear figurative minds being blown at Ella’s scat prowess and musical wit. I love hearing the thunder of the crowd at the end of the number, so desperate for more that Norman Granz’s (Ella’s manager and so clearly delighted by the response) has to come on stage to apologise that Ella absolutely cannot sing further. By the end of the album, you are one of the crowd, longing for just one more song. Spotify
#5: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook
(1961) Spotify | Apple Music
Harold Arlen, who wrote among many classics, “Over the Rainbow” and “The Man That Got Away” always seems a perfect match for Ella, and her song book in tribute to his oeuvre: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook, is joyful piece of work. Fitzgerald’s incandescent tone and wonderful diction showcases Arlen’s beautiful melodies as well as his specific, beautifully-figured lyric writing that always captured character and emotion so well.
Two-song Spotlight:
Let’s Fall in Love: Cole Porter’s Let’s Fall in Love might be the sexier and better known of the two songs of the same name, but Arlen’s Let’s Fall in Love is an underrated delight. There’s just something so delicious in the way the melody goes up two thirds in the second half of the opening lyric: “It's just a mental, sentimental alibi.” There’s no real improvisation here, it’s a very straightforward cover, but so elegant and effortless. Spotify
Let’s Take a Walk around the Block: I love the lyric of this song so much. It’s about a couple in love, imagining all the amazing places they’ll travel together. But for the moment, while money is tight, they decide that it’s better to “take a walk around the block” instead. I just love the Ella’s scoop when she sings “block.” It’s one of Arlen’s songs that you really can’t imagine anyone else doing better than Ella. Spotify
(June 2020)
Read “To Ella with Love” here.