Soon, we'll be without the moon - humming a different tune
Continuing my trip back through the 1958 album charts.
13/07/58 : Sings The Irving Berlin Songbook - Ella Fitzgerald
Another three weeks skipped which all looked very familiar with My Fair Lady at the top for all of them and we come to this, the rarest of all flowers of these times. An actual woman! We did hear Kitty White's voice on one of the Elvis album and My Fair Lady and South Pacific have been doing well throughout the year, but this is the first time so far that a woman has been named as the album artist - and I'm expecting Ella to do a mighty fine job of it too.
She starts with a nicely slowed down version of "Let's Face The Music And Dance" which conveys more of the menace in the song than most. And it continues in a very similar vein of quality, with her lovely voice covering a decent amount of variety across waaay more tracks than I was expecting - 95 minutes of them! The ones that jumped out of at me were ones I knew - "Puttin' On The Ritz" and "Cheek To Cheek", but it's all very listenable indeed with more variety than I was expecting.
We're at #5 with a new entry in the chart this week - and that was all it had, which is shocking behaviour from the 1958 record buying public and the rest of the top five were My Fair Lady, South Pacific, Frank and Lonnie.
Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - mostly telling us that it was by Ella and she sang the songs of Irving! The only item of interest is that it was nominated for the inaugural Grammy Album Of The Year award (losing out to Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn soundtrack). Looking at her entry, she REALLY liked singing other people's songbooks, also tackling Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Duke Ellington, George & Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer and Antonio Carlos Jobim over the years. My favourite album title of hers though has to be her '55 offering of Miss Ella Fitzgerald and Mr Gordon Jenkins Invite You To Listen and Relax!
"Customers also listened to" Billie Holliday and approximately a million other albums form Ella - I guess Ella fans don't like to stray too far. Which is fine, but I think it's a shame that other people don't investigate Ella more - there's a load of history and a load of soul here which deserves to be investigated by more. And I most definitely include myself in this list - I was aware of Ella but hadn't really listened to much of her stuff, but I really enjoyed this. And I'm disappointed that it didn't get a better reception from the '58 public.
Comments
Post a Comment