And the Song Books' substantial commercial success made them a landmark in Jazz vocals, but one key issue among critics that has often dogged these recordings is how much heartbreak Ella is not emphasizing in her singing on some of the sadder songs. Some arrangements sound more dated than others (Bregman's sometimes cutesy charts on the otherwise brilliant Cole Porter Song Book come to mind), but Ella's voice sounds gorgeous throughout, yet particularly warm and rich on the earliest Song Books, highlighting the work of Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and Ellington. While to this day the Ellington Song Book has many of my favorite tracks from the box set-including stunning small group versions of "Azure," "Sophisticated Lady," "Love You Madly," and more-after listening to other albums in the box set with more patience developed over the years, I have also grown to appreciate the Harold Arlen Song Book and some others to a lesser extent, including the Johnny Mercer Song Book. Part of the reason was that I expected more jazzy arrangements and singing, having heard the Duke Ellington Song Book previously and enjoyed it tremendously. So with different songwriters and arrangers, each album has its own unique feel.Īfter hearing the single-CD compilation, The Best of the Song Books, for a couple of years, I first heard this box set in its entirety in 2003 from a library and was initially somewhat dismissive of most of it, given its high reputation in jazz history. The arrangements, too, vary from the gently swinging work of Nelson Riddle (famous for his work during this period with Frank Sinatra) to the sometimes brassier charts of Paul Weston and Buddy Bregman. Some albums here, especially her Duke Ellington collection, contain much more of jazz elements than most other Song Books, but for American popular music aficionados, Fitzgerald's stunning voice, effortlessly gliding between octaves, provides a fresh alternative to the Song Book revival albums of Rod Stewart, for one, over the last decade or so. The eight Song Book albums, originally released between 19, are occasionally trying exercises in patience (the longest set, the Gershwin Song Book album, contains over fifty songs), but there is much excellent music on The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books, released as a 16-CD box set in 1993. Highlighting the work of individual songwriters and teams like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and George and Ira Gershwin, these album helped build Fitzgerald's reputation in mainstream pop circles and solidified her legendary status in jazz as a joyful "musician's singer." Originally a "girl singer" leading drummer Chick Webb's big band in the 1930s, Jazz vocal giant Ella Fitzgerald transformed into the iconic "First Lady of Song" during the '50s and '60s, in large part because of her Song Book albums for Verve Records. The CHIRP Blog Josh Friedberg: Music Historian's Corner writes Rediscovering Our Record Collections: “The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books”
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