Search - Ella Fitzgerald :: Diva Series

Not Known As "The First Lady Of Jazz" For Nothing

08/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This Diva Series from Verve contains probably THE most influential female jazz vocalists of the 20th Century [Anita O'Day, Carmen MacRae, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Blossom Dearie, Billie Holiday, Astrud Gilberto] - but none more outstanding than this lady from Newport News, Virginia.



There are, fittingly, countless Ella Fitzgerald CDs on the market and, I daresay, 100 years after her untimely passing on June 15, 1996 from complications associated with diabetes, there will continue to be a multitude of Ella Fitzgerald collections in whatever form they will take in 2096.



Everyone wanted to sing with her, and all the important ones did, including The Ink Spots, Louis Armstrong, the Delta Rhythm Boys, and Louis Jordan. In this collection she sings with some of the greatest jazz/blues stars of the age, among them Roy Brown, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Jim Hall, Ellis Larkins, Oscar Peterson, Nelson Riddle, Chick Webb, and Ben Webster.



Winner of the Down Beat top female vocalist award more than 20 times, winner of 12 Grammys, and accorded that organization's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967, she is, quite simply, in a class by herself.



In this collection she handles some of the best from the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin, among others, along with the 1938 rendition of her own composition A-Tisket, A-Tasket, with Chick Webb's Orchestra, and the memorable version of Mack The Knife done at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin in February 1960.



A discography of the contents includes the names of all musicians on each track, and there are three background paragraphs written by Will Friedwald in September 2002. What an album, and a must-have for any Ella Fitzgerald fan."