Ella Fitzgerald
Sings The Rodgers And Hart Song Book

THE REVIEW

 Ella Fitzgerald was without a doubt one of the greatest singers of all time, both white and black, and she is especially universally recognized as the absolute queen of jazz vocals.

The reasons are obvious; just listen to her voice even once to realize you are in the presence of a unique and inimitable talent. Unmatched for technique, intonation, sense of rhythm, clarity of pronunciation, enthusiasm, and interpretative skills, Ella has always been the benchmark for her "colleagues", even for the greatest and most illustrious rivals like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.

Some of the highest points of her career were reached in the second half of the '50s, a period in which she recorded for Verve a glorious series of interpretations of the songbooks of the greatest American songwriters, a series inaugurated in '56 by the splendid work dedicated to Cole Porter.

After the extraordinary and well-deserved success of that first release, just six months later Norman Granz (Verve's leading man) decided to repeat the operation with this equally wonderful "The Rodgers and Hart Song Book", successfully repeating both artistic and commercial success. In the following years, other gems followed, such as works dedicated to Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, but especially the quintuple LP (now 3 CDs plus one of alternative mono versions) dedicated to George & Ira Gershwin, perhaps the greatest songbook of all time, with arrangements by Nelson Riddle, the best arranger around.

If Ella had already proven to be the best scat singer at the birth of bop, giving a brilliant example of how the human voice can and should be considered a complete musical instrument, on these occasions she put aside improvisation and also demonstrated to be a masterful interpreter of standards, indeed the greatest of all.

Songs like "My Funny Valentine", "Bewitched", "Blue Moon", need no introduction, just like "My Romance", "It Never Entered My Mind", "Spring Is Here"; and equally: "I Didn't Know What Time It Was", "I Could Write A Book", and "Lover".

Fitzgerald provides in these recordings the definitive vocal version, exalting the melodic lines of Rodgers to the maximum and always rendering Hart's lyrics (often erudite) credible and experienced "on her own skin". The orchestrations by Buddy Bregman are more than good and functional in showcasing Ella's voice, and they manage to avoid repetition despite the 35 tracks contained in the double CD, which flow by effortlessly; at times, there is a taste that today may appear retro in the use of strings, but excessive cloyingness is always avoided!

Apart from the intrinsic value and the pure pleasure of listening that derives from it, it is important to emphasize that this series of records still represents the reference point for the study and knowledge of standards, and they are also used at a didactic level by professional musicians as a "starting point" to make these true sacred texts of jazz their own. But any listener will benefit from this knowledge, since these songs are the daily bread of jazz musicians of the past and the present as well, and obviously knowing the themes well, the refrains (and why not, even the lyrics), and the various melodic and harmonic nuances of these evergreens can only improve the understanding of improvisational complexities, and allows everyone to get in tune even with frequent abstractions, and fully enjoy some strokes of genius of the improvisers without losing the thread. Indeed, often the original melodies are just hinted at, and not knowing them is clearly a handicap if one wants to grasp certain subtleties.

One never stops studying, but in these cases, it's always gratifying, a true investment in one's listening skills!