Ella Fitzgerald: Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (2LP, Vital Vinyl series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Vital Vinyl series 2LP set presents all 32 songs in mono, pressed in the EU. It was the first of Ella's Song Book albums for Verve, the series that made the Great American Songbook her own.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Vital Vinyl series
• Mono
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Cole Porter wrote some of the cleverest words in American song, and it takes real nerve to sing them as if you'd just thought of them. Ella Fitzgerald does it 32 times here. Norman Granz had started Verve in 1956 with Ella at the heart of his plans, and this was the first big swing of it: a whole double album given over to one songwriter, cut in Los Angeles that year with Buddy Bregman arranging and conducting.

The running order moves between big-band swing and lush, string-wrapped ballads, and Ella is at ease in both. "Anything Goes," "Too Darn Hot" and "Just One of Those Things" bounce; "Miss Otis Regrets" is told with a perfectly straight face; "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" and "So in Love" are as tender as anything she ever put down. "Night and Day," "Love for Sale," "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "Begin the Beguine" are all here too, sung with crisp diction and a swing that never pushes.

Its success set Granz and Ella off on a run of Song Books devoted to Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer. Four sides, 32 songs, and no good reason to leave the armchair except to turn the record over.

Also at Kops: more Ella Fitzgerald on vinyl · browse Vocal Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Verve, a reissue of the 1956 album.