Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Gershwin Songbook (1959)
60 Years ago today, U.S. newspapers published a column on “Last-Minute Gifts” which Richard Spong wrote for Editorial Research Reports. The 1959 gift suggestions he mentioned varied from “$25,000 Worth of natural crown sable” for the ladies and “a set of cashmere underwear, tops and bottoms, at a mere $115” for the men. In the realm of music, he suggested “you could give the Ella Fitzgerald five-volume Gershwin record album, costing only $100, and probably a better bargain than anything else herein.” Today’s Santa’s can still present a CD-version of the Verve album, or you can listen to it in its entirety on YouTube’s Timeless Music Box channel.
Ella Fitzgerald (vocals) accompanied by an orchestra conducted and arranged by Nelson Riddle. In the brass section we find Pete Candoli, Conrad Gazzo, Shorty Sherock and Don Fagerquist on trumpets, and the trombonist are Dick Nash, Tommy Pederson and George Roberts. The reed section consisted of Benny Carter, Buddy Collette, Ronnie Land, Ted Nash and Plas Johnson. The pianists for this project were Paul Smith and Louis Levy. On guitar were Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel, and the bass players were Joe Mondragon and Joe Comfort. The drummers Riddle used were Alvin Stoller and Mel Lewis, and he also added the string section of his orchestra for these recording sessions in Hollywood -- the town where composer George Gershwin had died.
This Verve 5-LP set was one of the most ambitious of the celebrated song books recorded by Ella Fitzgerald during the Fifties, and one of the best vocal jazz albums ever made. After more than a year of preparations, Norman Granz produced the 5-LP set in 1959. The album would mark one of Granz’ most important projects with Ella. The Gershwin album presented 53 Fitzgerald interpretations sung during a brief eight-month period from January to August 1959.
By the time Ella made this set, the 42-year old singer had already recorded song books by Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, Duke Ellington, and Irving Berlin. In fact, she had even attempted an earlier Gershwin song book in 1950, when she was still working for Decca. Issued as a 10” LP under the title of “Ella Sings Gershwin” it contained eight songs and presented the singer in a duo setting accompanied by pianist Ellis Larkins.
The 1959 recordings were Ella’s first full album collaboration with Nelson Riddle, who made the following observation on these sessions: “Ella Fitzgerald, one of the purest natural talents who had ever lived, is a warm and kindly person. I remember the Gershwin album as a prime example of Ella’s uncomplicated, almost childlike nature. In 59 selections recorded over a period of eight months, not a note was changed in any arrangement, no key was altered, no routine was restructured. Everything went according to plan, pleasantly and entirely satisfactory.”
Ella also loved working with Riddle, as she declared that, “he is a singer’s arranger and a gentleman. He gets better and better.”
By 1959, composer George Gershwin (born in Brooklyn as Jacob Gershowitz, 1898-1937) had been dead 20 years. However, his elder brother, the lyricist Ira Gershwin, was still alive. Ira (born as Israel Gershowitz, 1896-1983) agreed to collaborate with the making of “Ella Fitzgerald sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook” and even revised a number of his own lyrics. Upon the album's completion’, Ira remarked: “I’ve never known how good our songs were until I heard Ella sing them,”
The inner sleeves of the 5-LP set contained beautiful Bernard Buffet designs. According to author Sid Colin, Norman Granz -- “in the manner of the art world” -- produced a limited edition of only 175 copies of this LP-set, each of them bearing the autographs of Ira Gershwin, Nelson Riddle, Bernard Buffet and Ella Fitzgerald. Santa sliding down the chimney with such a gift would have made 175 families very, very happy.
