The Good: Great voice, Decent length, Good diversity of song styles.
The Bad: Not the greatest rendition of some of the songs presented.
The Basics: Quite close to perfect, still eminently worthwhile The Best Of The Songbooks provides listeners with a series varied Ella Fitzgerald performances from some of the best composers of her day!
I am uncertain if the word "ironic" is the one I truly want, but it does certainly seem odd that I would reach my review of the Ella Fitzgerald album The Best Of The Songbooks before I had taken in the final Fitzgerald album on my desk, which is Ella Fitzgerald singing the Jerome Kern songbook. As it turns out, in my month-long immersion into the works of Ella Fitzgerald, I only ended up finding two compilations of Fitzgerald singing the works uniquely of one composer: Day Dream: Best Of The Duke Ellington Songbook and Oh, Lady, Be Good! Best Of The Gershwin Songbook. So, even without hearing the library of Jerome Kern songs Fitzgerald performs, I've listened a dozen times to The Best Of The Songbooks and it is both enjoyable and substantial.
For those who are unfamiliar with the works of Ella Fitzgerald, the concept is worth explaining. Ella Fitzgerald, while a great talent, was only a performer. She did not write, produce or compose her own work. Instead, she sang the works of artists who wrote standards for jazz singers to perform. The collections of those composers, known as songbooks, were then performed by Fitzgerald (and others, like Frank Sinatra) and she recorded a series of albums that were later made into a sixteen compact disc set. Those albums, the "Songbook" Collection, represent Fitzgerald's devoted attempts to present the works of Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Ellington, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Kern and Johnny Mercer. This compilation, then, is intended to be a digest of the best performances of the best songs she performed out of those two hundred plus songs in her "Songbook" recordings. And this is a great, but not perfect, compilation of some amazing songs performed by Fitzgerald.
With sixteen songs, clocking out at 62:35, The Best Of The Songbooks, as revealed in the liner notes is organized as an ideal Ella Fitzgerald concert from her songbook collection. The intent, then, according to Geoffrey Mark Fidelman - who organized the album, picked the songs on it and wrote the liner notes - is to provide something of a songbook concert that never was. It's an ambitious and wonderful concept.
The strength of The Best Of The Songbooks comes in the diversity of tracks and the strengths and dignity of the vocals of Ella Fitzgerald herself. The track diversity - as one who has listened to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald of late - is exceptionally important and the album flows rather well from track to track. Starting out with a swing jazz track that is heavy in the brass section, "Something's Gotta Give," The Best Of The Songbooks includes virtually every style of jazz Fitzgerald performs, up to a climax with her jazz scatting on "Cotton Tail." She has stylish toe-tapping songs ("Love For Sale"), slow, sad ballads ("Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye") and virtually everything in between on this album.
Often, the problem with Fitzgerald's compilations is they include only one sound. Fitzgerald performs either with a giant swing band (lots of brass), a jazz orchestra (more strings) or intimately with only a piano. On The Best Of The Songbooks, though, there is an ideal mix of instrumental accompaniment. Thus, Fitzgerald performs before Ellington's orchestra and Nelson Riddle's, which sound distinctly different in their instrumental composition and with a much more intimate sound on "Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered." On that song, she is accompanied by a quartet with only piano, guitar, bass and drums. The result is an album that keeps the ear of the listener attentive because one does not know just what to expect from the next track, even after listening to the album over and over again.
Overall, though, the album might be perfect for those who feel intimidated by jazz and/or swing music. The Best Of The Songbooks has a vibe more in line with what one might expect from showtunes as opposed to jazz. For sure, there is an intimate relationship between vocal jazz performances and showtunes, but many people might not make that connection until they hear Fitzgerald performing the Gershwin tune "'S Wonderful." There is a disarming quality to the arrangement and presentation of the music on this album that makes it very accessible to those who were raised on modern popular music.
That said, it is hard to imagine anyone being intimidated by the sound of Ella Fitzgerald's presentations. Songs like "Hooray For Love" are instantly disarming and have a very "pop" sound to it which is likely to impress new listeners with how articulate Fitzgerald may be while singing quickly. She is expressive and articulate; on "Hooray For Love," she actually sounds like she is having a good time with performing, making the music come alive for the listener. That music recorded over half a century ago may sound vibrant, current and alive now is impressive.
She continues to illustrate her range by following that song up with the contemplative "Why Was I Born?" On that song, she is able to utilize the full range of her vocal ability traversing all three-octaves within her range effortlessly. The song is slow and forces her to hold notes for long periods of time as opposed to quickly rattling off words in succession. The result is a track that emotes so much more than it tells, making for a vital difference between it and the song that preceded it. But those two represent the extremes of Fitzgerald's style and vocal abilities, with the rest of the album falling in between those two types.
In fact, the only thing truly frustrating about listening to The Best Of The Songbooks is that there are some better recordings than the ones that are presented on this album. So, for example, having heard it performed as a duet, when Fitzgerald performs "They Can't Take That Away From Me" I find myself missing the accompaniment by Louis Armstrong. Armstrong and Fitzgerald performed that song beautifully on some of their duet albums and while this is a more pure Fitzgerald experience, it is not the absolute best recording of the song she ever performed on.
Still, the songs Fitzgerald performs are generally wonderful in that they have something to say. Fitzgerald takes simple poetics like "Everytime we say goodbye, I die a little, / Everytime we say goodbye, I wonder why a little, / Why the Gods above me, who must be in the know. / Think so little of me, they allow you to go. / When you're near, there's such an air of spring about it, / I can hear a lark somewhere, begin to sing about it . . ." ("Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye") and makes them resonate with truly genuine emotion. When she sings that song, she presents a wrenching version of the lines that it is hard not to miss one who is no longer with them.
One of the other enjoyable things about The Best Of The Songbooks is that it reminds listeners how controversial jazz could be, especially for the time. Consider that in 1956 Ella Fitzgerald was singing the lines "I've sinned a lot, I'm mean a lot / But I'm like sweet seventeen a lot . . . I'll sing to him, each spring to him / And worship the trousers that cling to him / Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I / When he talks, he is seeking / Words to get off his chest / Horizontally speaking, he's at his very best / Vexed again, perplexed again / Thank God, I can be oversexed again . . ." ("Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered"). Jazz was an adult form of music and it is actually refreshing to hear lines that treat love as something that is complex. The songs selected for this album do that quite well and say a lot about the culture within the U.S. culture that was jazz culture!
The other nice thing about The Best Of The Songbooks is how it may expand the musical education of its listeners. Despite having several songs that I was familiar with, there were songs like "Midnight Sun" which I had never heard of. From Johnny Mercer and Francis Burke came some beautiful poetics and Fitzgerald makes them come alive. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone else singing "I can't explain the silver rain that found me--or was that a moonlit veil? / The music of the universe around me, or was that a nightingale? / And then your arms miraculously found me,suddenly the sky turned pale, / I could see the Midnight Sun. " ("Midnight Sun") better after hearing Fitzgerald sing it!
The Best Of The Songbooks is close to perfect, but not quite there, a near miss for the Ella Fitzgerald collector, but certainly a strong enough concept for all audiences to buy and enjoy. For a diverse Ella Fitzgerald experience, there are few albums that are going to top this one!
The best track is "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" and the low point is the less memorable "Miss Otis Regrets."
For other works by Ella Fitzgerald, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Ella And Louis
Ella At Duke's Place
Ella Fitzgerald With The Tommy Flanagan Trio
The Intimate Ella
Shine
Ella And Louis Again
That Old Black Magic
Starlit Hour
Love And Kisses
Day Dream: Best Of The Duke Ellington Songbook
Oh, Lady, Be Good! The Best Of The Gershwin Songbook
Pure Ella
Flying Home
9/10
For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all of my music reviews!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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