Ella Fitzgerald Hdtracks 1969

During her long career, every once in awhile Ella Fitzgerald would attempt to "get with it" and record contemporary pop tunes. In 1968 for a live concert with a big band and the Tommy Flanagan Trio, the First Lady of the American Song did what she could with such unsuitable material as "Hey Jude," "Sunshine of Your Love," "Watch What Happens" and "A House Is Not a Home." The results (despite her sincerity) sometime borders on the embarassing; there is no way anyone can swing "Hey Jude." A few of the other numbers (particularly "Give Me the Simple Life," "Old Devil Moon" and "Love You Madly") are of a higher quality but when Ella tries to turn "Alright, Okay, You Win" into funk, it is time to switch records.

An amalgamation of two previous albums, the material here is predominately contemporary pop. Ella puts her Midas touch on compositions by Randy Newman, Bacharach/David, Harry Nilsson, and Lennon/McCartney, as well as some typical easy listening standards like "Black Coffee," "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," "Days of Wine and Roses," and "Manteca." Highlights are three Smokey Robinson compositions: "Get Ready" (where Richard Aplanalp's baritone sax replicates Melvin Franklin's bass part heard on the original by the Temptations), "The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game," and "Ooo Baby Baby." A rendition of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" doesn't work as well, but she nails Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood" like a journeyman carpenter - proving, as she does on all 22 selections, that a classy voice like hers can sing anything and sing it very well.

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.

Simply a grand and eloquent performance put together by Verve records highlighting the best years of Ella Fitzgerald – that sassy, charming legendary singer in jazz. The Best of the Songbooks features a captivating lineup of some of jazz's greatest composers and arrangers. It is here that Fitzgerald records and sings songs of Cole Porter, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer.

This is an eight-CD set more for Duke Ellington fanatics than for general listeners. Originally, some of the music came out as a two-LP set (Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur) and a single album (Ellington's Soul Call), but the great majority of the material was previously unreleased when this box came out in 1998.