Artist: Ella Fitzgerald
Album: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
Year: 1959
Holy jeebus, when they say Ella sings the Gershwin Songbook...they mean the entire songbook. (Yes, I'm being facetious, I know there's more, much more, Gershwin than just this.) My point being, this one takes the cake for longest album so far. There's more than three hours of material here of Gershwin classics.
My grandmother was a huge fan of Judy Garland, who recorded some very well known versions of Gershwin tunes, and I wondered as I listened to this album what she would've thought of Ella Fitzgerald's version. No doubt in my mind that at some point in her lifetime, she heard this very album. I have to say that Ella Fitzgerald's voice is fantastic. It's just so classy and effortless and it suits the typically light-hearted Gershwin material extremely well. There are strong takes on upbeat classics like "I Got Rhythm" and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," and the ballads like "Someone to Watch Over Me" are well-sung also, even if a bit detached.
I do not recommend listening to this album all at once, three-and-a-half hours in one sitting, as I did. Though Ella's vocals are perfectly lovely, anything will overstay its welcome in too large a dose. Her voice is so smooth it could put me to sleep given enough time. I mean that in the best way possible.
At any rate, this is classic American music sung by one of the best singers of any era. I'm not a huge fan of showtunes, or vocal jazz for the most part, but I have tremendous respect for what was able to be accomplished on this album. Of the three jazz divas I've listened to today (Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan being the others), Ella Fitzgerald is my favorite of the three.
Rating: Worth repeated listens
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