ELLA FITZGERALD COLE PORTER SONGBOOK FULL
ELLA FITZGERALD COLE PORTER SONGBOOK SERIES

ELLA FITZGERALD COLE PORTER SONGBOOK SERIES

This album inaugurated Fitzgerald's Song Book series, each of the eight albums in the series focusing on a different composer of the canon known as the Great American Songbook. įitzgerald's time on the Verve label would see her produce her most highly acclaimed recordings, at the peak of her vocal powers. The trick was to change the backing enough so that, here and there, there would be signs of jazz. I envisaged her doing a lot of composers. So I proposed to Ella that the first Verve album would not be a jazz project, but rather a song book of the works of Cole Porter. I was interested in how I could enhance Ella’s position, to make her a singer with more than just a cult following amongst jazz fans. Granz decided to have Fitzgerald record well-established popular works because This was Fitzgerald's first album for the newly created Verve Records (and the first album to be released by the label). It may have been an old idea thought of again, but it is a brilliant concept, one that the entire record industry has replicated many times since.Įlla Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers and Hart Songbook can be bought here.Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song BookĮlla Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book is a 1956 studio double album by American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a studio orchestra conducted and arranged by Buddy Bregman, focusing on the songs of Cole Porter. It was an idea he tried out with Oscar Peterson on Clef records, one of Granz’s labels before he started Verve. But it should not go unmentioned what a clever idea it was by Granz to create this series of recordings with his most prized asset on Verve Records. It’s Ella’s performances that make these two collections, and the other songbooks she did in the series, so brilliant and, by the same token, so important. Other standouts include “There’s a Small Hotel,” “You Took Advantage of Me,” and the perennial, “My Funny Valentine.” It’s not difficult to hear why many think Ella is the best jazz singer of the 20th century. When she goes into the chorus of “We’ll have Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island too,” she swings it so effortlessly. It includes “Manhattan” which has one of the most sublime moments on any Ella recording.

ELLA FITZGERALD COLE PORTER SONGBOOK FULL

It is a beautiful album, full of standards that everyone knows and loves, but in Ella’s hands these song become even more special. Trumpeter, Maynard Ferguson, Milt Bernhart’s trombone, Herb Geller, and Ted Nash and Bud Shank doubling on clarinets and saxophone, Barney Kessel on guitar, and drummer Alvin Stoller.Įlla Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers and Hart Songbook did even better than the Cole Porter Songbook on the Billboard album charts, making No.11 on the chart in March 1957. Like its predecessor it features the cream of West Coast session musicians, many of whom graced the fabulous recordings that Frank Sinatra was making around the same time in the same studio. On August 21, 1956, Ella, Granz, and Bregman began work on their next songbook: Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers and Hart Songbook. 18 on the list of bestsellers for the whole year, one that was dominated by soundtrack albums. By the end of the year, the double LP was No. In September Ella was the headliner on the annual Jazz at the Philharmonic autumn tour of America.

15 on the Billboard Best Sellers list after Verve had taken an extensive advertising campaign in Esquire, The New Yorker, High Fidelity, and a dozen Sunday Newspapers across America. The 32 track Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook came out on May 15, 1956, as a double album and sold for $9.96.

Ella fitzgerald cole porter songbook