Existing at the intersection of pop and jazz, the performances on The Cole Porter Song Book remain faithful to Porter's original intentions while still personalized to Ella's singular strengths as a vocalist. As arranger-conductor, he brought to The Cole Porter Song Book rich strings and boisterous brass, though neither component of his orchestration dared overwhelm Fitzgerald's voice - expressive, vibrant, and flexible. Many of the qualities noted by author Fred Lounsberry in his original liner notes (reprinted in Analog Spark's editions) to describe the songwriter also apply to the singer, such as: individuality, originality, restraint, and maturity.īuddy Bregman (1930-2017), a nephew of famed composer Jule Styne ( Gypsy, Funny Girl), was the head of A&R at Verve, working at the label with the likes of Anita O'Day, Bing Crosby, Count Basie, Joe Williams, Fred Astaire, and others. Fitzgerald, born in Virginia but a prominent player at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, brought an intuitive understanding to these songs that might have otherwise been considered relics of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. Though born in Peru, Indiana, Porter epitomized "New York" with his cultured style. His Broadway career had begun in 1916 with See America First, and while most of America didn't see that short-lived production, soon the country would be playing and singing the best of Cole Porter: "Let's Do It" (1928), "You Do Something to Me" (1929), "Night and Day" (1932), "Anything Goes," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," "Don't Fence Me In" (1934), "Begin the Beguine," "Just One of Those Things" (1935) and "I've Got You Under My Skin" (1936) - and that's just Porter's first twenty years.įitzgerald recorded all of those songs and more for the Song Book project, swinging the songwriter's urbane melodies and sophisticated, witty, and often quite ribald and double entendre-laden lyrics. Whether vinyl or SACD is your medium of choice, this pair of beautiful releases allows these vintage recordings to sparkle anew.Ĭole Porter was still active as a composer-lyricist when Ella Fitzgerald and Buddy Bregman stepped into Capitol Studios in February 1956 with Verve's Norman Granz to record the sprawling Cole Porter Song Book. The latter is playable on all CD players, but available in high resolution to those with SACD equipment. To celebrate the Fitzgerald centennial, Analog Spark has brought the very first songbook title and the artist's Verve Records debut - 1956's Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book - as both a deluxe 180-gram 3-LP vinyl box set and a hybrid mono SACD. Between 19, Fitzgerald teamed with a variety of arrangers (including Buddy Bregman, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Paul Weston) to salute the body of work that would later be referred to as "The Great American Songbook." In fact, these seminal albums can be fairly said to have had a hand in establishing the standard repertoire.
She recorded over a remarkable seven-decade span, from 1935 through the early 1990s, yet her most significant contribution to the canon of American song just might be her Songbook series.
While the First Lady of Song passed away in 1996 at the age of 79, her rich legacy of music has hardly waned. Today, Ella Fitzgerald would have turned 100 years old.
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