In the video at the top from a performance in Berlin in 1968, you can see Fitzgerald “destroy” the harmonic minor scale, as the YouTube uploader puts it, while pianist Tee Carson looks on in awe. (We need look no further than the vicious persecution of Billie Holiday by the country’s first drug czar, Henry Anslinger, as case in point.) America may not always have been eager to embrace Fitzgerald, but she was happy nonetheless to gift the country its greatest music. establishment when Fitzgerald began her career. What’s fascinating about that transformation is the way in which Fitzgerald’s renditions of popular songs elevated them to eternal mainstream status by drawing on the rhythmic and melodic resources of jazz, a distinctly Black American music sometimes cast as a threat to the U.S. But she’s better known by another name, “The First Lady of Song,” for definitive interpretations of Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, and, of course, George and Ira Gershwin. Fitzgerald’s recordings of their songs played “an essential role in the broader transformation of the Gershwin’s music from show tunes to American Songbook standards,” writes the University of Michigan’s Gershwin Initiative. We could point to cuts from nearly any one of her over 200 albums as evidence for why she is the undisputed “Queen of Jazz,” a title for which she worked hard in her nearly 60-year career. No one ever gave Ella Fitzgerald faint praise. Recorded in five sessions from Aug– Jin Hollywood, Los Angeles.“I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” - Ira Gershwin " Sing My Heart" (Alternative take) – 2:32Īll songs composed by Harold Arlen, with lyricists indicated. " Let's Take a Walk Around the Block" (Alternative take) – 4:07Ģ8. " Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" (Harburg) – 3:19īonus tracks issued on the 2001 Verve 2CD Reissue, 589108.Ģ7.
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