Ella Ray

Digitally remastered collection containing a never before heard live performance by the great Ella Fitzgerald, recorded live in Amsterdam in 1961. She is backed here by her usual group of that period, featuring pianist Lou Levy, guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Wilfred Middlebrooks, and drummer Gus Johnson. As a bonus, the only two surviving songs from a 1953 Carnegie Hall set by Ella, both of which appear here on CD for the first time ever.

With the death of Chick Webb in 1939, his big band was temporarily without a leader. Since Ella Fitzgerald had become the orchestra's most popular attraction, she was put at its head even though she had very little to do with the music. The Webb management, musical director Teddy McRae and trumpeter Taft Jordan actually ran the show, but Fitzgerald was still virtually the only female singer (other than Ina Ray Hutton) to be the leader of her own big band during the era. The experiment would last for two years, until Fitzgerald started her own remarkably successful solo career in 1941. While most of the band's recordings after Webb's death featured Fitzgerald's vocals, the four radio broadcasts that comprise this two-CD set have the orchestra taking instrumentals on over one-third of the material…

Ella Fitzgerald - The Complete Decca Singles, Vol. 2: 1939-1941 (2017) {2CD Set, Verve Reissues, Digital Only Issue}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44.1kHz - Digital Download -> 696 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 410 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 1939-41, 2017 Verve Reissues / UMG | Digital Only Issue
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Bop / Standards / Swing

Come on folks, this is ELLA FITZGERALD we're talking about. Ella from her early years, recording for Decca Records. Oh the songs on this collection! Oh the memories! Every single song is fabulous and if you like music, you need to own this collection. Not just Jazz, not just Swing, not just Pop - but all Ella, all GREAT. Highly recommended.

The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong On Verve (3 CD) (1997)

This compact, stylishly packaged, three-disc box set delivers exactly what the title promises: every one of the 47 master tracks (including a few unreleased tracks) recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong for Verve between August 1956 and October 1957. The jazz standards and pop songs on disc one and two are what gained the most attention at the time, and justifiably so - Fitzgerald and Armstrong are possibly the two greatest scat singers in jazz history, and under Norman Granz's magnificent tutelage, both perform at the best of their abilities.

"A Classy Pair" is a most apt title for this session, which features Ella Fitzgerald and the final incarnation of the Count Basie Orchestra, perhaps the last major big band to exist under the baton of its namesake. Recorded in February 1979 and produced by the legendary Norman Granz, these nine tracks show Fitzgerald in a somewhat better light than the orchestra.

The idea was to put Ella in the studio with some of the best jazz musicians in the world (Tommy Flanagan, Ray Brown, Louie Bellson, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Lockjaw Davis and Sweets Edison) and turn them loose on a choice collection of standards. It turned out to be a pretty good idea. Fine and Mellow captures in the intimacy of a studio the kind of freewheeling improvisational performances that Ella usually reserved for the stage. The album won the Grammy Award Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 1980.

Ella Fitzgerald was never thought of as a blues singer but she does a surprisingly effective job on the ten blues songs here, including "See See Rider," "Trouble in Mind," "St. Louis Blues," and Bessie Smith's "Jailhouse Blues." She somehow sings more or less in the style of the classic blues vocalists of the 1920s and largely pulls it off. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge, who has few solos and is low in the mix, is largely wasted, as organist Wild Bill Davis (with assistance from guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Gus Johnson) dominate the ensembles. It's an interesting set.

These rare sessions capture Ella at the transition point between her previous professional incarnation as teen swing ingenue and her new incarnation as First Lady of American Popular Song and jazz virtuosa extraordinaire.