Ella Fitzgerald And Louis Armstrong Porgy And Bess

Producer Norman Granz oversaw two Porgy & Bess projects. The first involved Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and came together during the autumn of 1957 with brassy big band and lush orchestral arrangements by Russ Garcia. This is the classic Verve Porgy & Bess, and it's been reissued many, many times. The second, recorded during the spring and summer of 1976 and issued by RCA, brought Ray Charles together with versatile British vocalist Cleo Laine, backed by an orchestra under the direction of Frank DeVol. A comparison of these two realizations bears fascinating fruit, particularly when the medleys of street vendors are played back to back…

For the first time, all of Ella & Louis' classic duets are in one place. This 4CD set gathers their timeless three Verve albums newly remastered versions of Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again and Porgy and Bess combining them with their eight Decca singles, live recordings from Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl plus several alternates & false starts from the Decca & Verve eras, illuminating their craft & good humor.

For the first time, all of Ella & Louis' classic duets are in one place. This 4CD set gathers their timeless three Verve albums newly remastered versions of Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again and Porgy and Bess combining them with their eight Decca singles, live recordings from Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl plus several alternates & false starts from the Decca & Verve eras, illuminating their craft & good humor.

The Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong edition of Verve's long-running Compact Jazz series of reissues condenses three remarkable albums - 1955's Ella and Louis, 1956's Ella and Louis Again, and 1958's Porgy and Bess - into a fantastic 12-track collection. Of course, you could pick and random assortment of 12 tracks from these three discs and have a collection of fantastic merit, but these specific performances are particularly outstanding. Opening with a swinging "They Can't Take That Away From Me," Compact Jazz emphasizes the more playful side of the Fitzgerald/Armstrong collaborations, downplaying the more serious Porgy and Bess material - a lovely take of "Summertime" an exception - in favor of giddy versions of standards like "I Won't Dance" and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." There's an exuberant joy in this music that won't fail to charm even the most hard-hearted listener.

10 CD box set of sixteen original jazz albums from the Godmother of female jazz, Ella Fitzgerald. Including the legendary Porgy and Bess with Louis Armstrong and milestone recordings like Ella sings Gershwin and Rhythm is My Business.

No thanks to a concert schedule that gave recording sessions a low priority, Louis Armstrong's period at Verve was unconscionably short - only a little over a year (August 1956 to October 1957). But since Verve chief Norman Granz liked to record his artists a lot, Armstrong's Verve sessions produced quite a harvest - six albums on eight LPs, including three with the redoubtable Ella Fitzgerald - substantial portions of which are included in this well-packed two-CD set. The albums Ella and Louis Again and Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson get the most exposure with eight tracks apiece, the first Ella and Louis album gets five, I've Got the World on a String gets four, and Louis Under the Stars and, strangely, the Porgy and Bess album with Fitzgerald only get three each…

The collaborations between Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong have attracted much attention over the years. The artists were both widely known icons not just in the areas of big band, jazz, and swing music but across 20th century popular music in general. The two African-American musicians produced three official releases together in Ella and Louis (1956), Ella and Louis Again (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1959),. Each release earned both commercial and critical success. As well, tracks related to those albums have also appeared in various forms in multi-artist collections and other such records.