Ella Live

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon."

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon."

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon."

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon."

Ted Milton - poet, puppeteer and musician - once described himself as "a tone-deaf musician" and at the end of a sax-part during a Blurt gig in Antwerp he proclaimed with a broad smile: "Oh, why don't I just take some lessons?" All this to say Ted doesn't see himself as a groundbreaking nor virtuoso saxplayer. However, when in good form his instrument becomes an extension of his body and wonderful sonic landscapes enfold. Here he leads his experimental art rock trio Blurt on their first live album since 1989's "The Body Live!". Recorded live at Cafe Oto in January 2016

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon." Working with producer/manager Norman Granz, she gained even more acclaim with her series of albums on Verve, recording definitive versions of the music of the Great American Songbook composers, including 1956's Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. Over her 50-year career, she earned 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and picked up numerous accolades including a National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A hugely important cultural figure, Fitzgerald made an immeasurable impact on the development of jazz and popular music, and remains a touchstone for fans and artists decades after her passing.

While the 1960 live album Ella in Berlin: Mack The Knife will always be the peak of Ella Fitzgerald's solo recording career, this exciting discovery is yet another example of her voice and interpretative drive being pushed to new heights by her audience. The great jazz singer's other strength as a soloist when it came to recordings—other than her fine collaborations with Louis Armstrong, which are practically their own genre—are the songbook collections she made in the studio with Norman Granz for his Verve label. While they all have their strong points, and the Duke Ellington collection where he and his band back her is exceptional, the volumes dedicated to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin rang true and sold big numbers, and it was music from those two collections that was featured in a split program at the Hollywood Bowl on August 16, 1958. The first pleasant surprise here is the sound. Project producer Gregg Field, who actually played drums with Fitzgerald for a time, has heroically recovered an enormous amount of information from the 64-year-old 1/4" tapes. Though rounded and dynamically limited, the sound is reasonably well-balanced between Fitzgerald's voice and the accompanying full orchestra. While it may be the presence of the audience spurring her on during the upbeat numbers, including many of Berlin's best-known tunes, they are delicious here.

In 1962, Ella Fitzgerald was at the height of her powers, about midway through recording her now-iconic series of "songbook" albums and, two years earlier, having released a barnstormer of a live album, Ella in Berlin, that solidified her position as one of the most talented and popular musicians working in the jazz idiom.

Ella Fitzgerald virtually invented the live album. The reason is simple: her performances were so consistently great that almost any live show was special enough to release as a record. In a sense, for Ella Fitzgerald, every night was 'The Moment of Truth'. Mixed directly from 4-track tapes recorded by Wally Heider-resulting in higher-fidelity audio than most `lost' recordings. Ella's band features the rarely-heard but hard-swinging trio of Jimmy Jones, Bob Cranshaw and Sam Woodyard. The Ellington band captured here was at its peak, featuring Cat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope