Ella Fitzgerald profile on TV tonight

BBC FOUR is screening its eagerly awaited one-hour Ella Fitzgerald profile tonight, as part of its intermittently excellent Legends series. (Repeated next Tuesday at 2000).

So why does Music for Grown-Ups go ga-ga at the mere mention of Ella’s name?

Simply because Ella Fitzgerald is the foremost female interpreter of popular song. Her recordings of many songs of her era stand as the definitive renditions. All of the musicians celebrated in Music For Grown-Ups have an unmistakeable sound - you recognise them instantly when you catch a snatch of their music on radio or TV.

There are some who prefer Billie Holiday (qv) to Ella Fitzgerald as a jazz vocalist. Holiday is superior at portraying the archetypal loser, the victim of poverty, racism and addiction - Ella can't match Holiday's evocation of pain (but, then, neither can anyone else).

But Fitzgerald has a wider emotional palette. She can do the full range – loss, joy, humour, ambiguity, puzzlement and everything in between - better than Holiday (and everyone else). And her use of the techniques of the jazz vocalist - scatting, mimicry of instruments, phrasing, improvisation, and swing, to name the more important - is unparalleled. For female jazz singers, as for balladeers, Ella Fitzgerald is the benchmark.

Her golden period, the Verve years, resulted in some of the creative highlights of the twentieth century, notably with the Songbook series of albums, recorded in the late 1950s. The collection has stood the test of time - after 50 years, the eight albums, over 16 CDs, covering 245 songs, stand as the high point of both Ella’s and Granz’s illustrious careers, arguably the greatest recording project in popular music.

So where should the novice, unfamiliar with Ella Fitzgerald’s great legacy, begin? Easy: with the Cole Porter or Gershwin Songbooks. Or with one of the compilation CDs: the premier collection is 2007’s The Very Best Of The Songbooks: The Golden Anniversary Edition, a judicious 2CD, 21-track set.

The outstanding 2003 Verve compilation, Ella Fitzgerald: Gold (2CD) also comes highly recommended; often available heavily discounted, it’s great value as a standalone, but it also serves as a sampler for the Songbooks as well as the wider Fitzgerald catalogue.



Gerry Smith