Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers & Hart Songbook (Remastered Deluxe Edition) Ella Fitzgerald

• 1Have You Met Miss Jones?03:41
• 2You Took Advantage Of Me03:28
• 3A Ship Without A Sail04:08
• 4To Keep My Love Alive03:37
• 5Dancing On The Ceiling04:08
• 6The Lady Is A Tramp03:24
• 7With A Song In My Heart02:46
• 8Manhattan02:52
• 9Johnny One Note02:14
• 10I Wish I Were In Love Again02:38
• 11Spring Is Here03:40
• 12It Never Entered My Mind04:08
• 13This Can't Be Love02:58
• 14Thou Swell02:05
• 15My Romance03:44
• 16Where Or When02:48
• 17Little Girl Blue03:55
• 18Give It Back To The Indians03:13
• 19Ten Cents A Dance04:08
• 20There's A Small Hotel02:49
• 21I Didn't Know What Time It Was03:47
• 22Ev'rything I've Got03:23
• 23I Could Write A Book03:40
• 24The Blue Room02:32
• 25My Funny Valentine03:55
• 26Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered07:03
• 27Mountain Greenery02:15
• 28Wait Till You See Her01:31
• 29Lover03:18
• 30Isn't It Romantic?03:03
• 31Here In My Arms01:55
• 32Blue Moon03:13
• 33My Heart Stood Still03:05
• 34I've Got Five Dollars02:42
• Total Runtime01:51:46

Info for Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers & Hart Songbook (Remastered Deluxe Edition)

„The second of Ella Fitzgerald's famed Songbook series features her singing 34 of the best songs co-written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The arrangements by Buddy Bregman for the string orchestra and big band only border on jazz but she manages to swing the medium-tempo numbers and give sensitivity to the ballads. With such songs as 'You Took Advantage of Me,' 'The Lady Is a Tramp,' 'It Never Entered My Mind,' 'Where or When,' 'My Funny Valentine,' and 'Blue Moon,' it is not too surprising that these recordings (originally released on a two-LP set) were so popular.“ (Scott Yanow)

Ella Fitzgerald, vocals
Ben Webster, tenor saxophone
Paul Smith, piano
Barney Kessel, guitar
Stuff Smith, violin
Joe Mandragon, bass
Alvin Stoller, drums
Buddy Bregman Orchestra

Recorded in August 1956 at Capitol Records Studios, Hollywood, CA
Produced by Norman Granz

Digitally remastered

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)
was, along with Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, one of the most important vocalists to emerge from the big-band era. Her style is marked by a sunny outlook, a girlish innocence, and a virtuoso command of her voice.

Fitzgerald was born out of wedlock in Newport News, Virginia, to a laundress mother and a father who disappeared when she was three years old. Along with her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend who functioned as a stepfather, she soon moved to Yonkers, New York, where she began her schooling. Around the third grade she started dancing, a pursuit that became almost an obsession. In 1932, when she was fifteen, her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. Her stepfather treated her badly, but an aunt took the teenager to live with her in Harlem. This arrangement did not last long; Fitzgerald ran away in 1934 to live on the streets. Late that year she won a talent contest at the Apollo Theater; she had entered as a dancer, but nervousness caused her to sing instead. Several months later she joined drummer Chick Webb’s big band, where she mostly sang novelties like 'Vote for Mr. Rhythm'. In 1938 she recorded 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket', her own adaptation of a turn-of-the-century nursery rhyme, which took the country by storm and eventually sold a million copies. When Webb died in 1939 the band’s management installed Fitzgerald as leader.

In 1942 the band broke up and Fitzgerald became a single act, touring with various other popular names of the day. She also became interested in scat singing and the newly emerging style known as bebop, and in 1945 she recorded a landmark version of 'Flying Home.' Several tours with the Dizzy Gillespie band also contributed to her assimilation of the bebop style.

In the late 1940s Fitzgerald began to tour with the Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe, working with such leading musicians as saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, pianist Oscar Peterson, and bassist Ray Brown, to whom she was married for four years. JATP impresario Norman Granz became increasingly influential in her career, and in 1953 he became her manager.

Three years after that he became her record producer as well, recording her on his own Verve label. He wasted little time in having Fitzgerald record a double album of Cole Porter songs. Fitzgerald made many wonderful albums for Verve in the following decade, but the six songbooks occupy a special place in her discography. They were instrumental in expanding Fitzgerald’s appeal beyond that of a 'jazz singer' and creating a demand for her in venues not usually open to jazz artists.

For die-hard jazz fans, though, the well-polished jewels of the songbook series lack the raw energy of Fitzgerald’s live performances. Happily, Granz released several landmark concert albums by her as well. Especially exciting was a 1960 Berlin concert, which featured an electrifying performance of an impromptu take on 'Mack the Knife,' which became a Top 30 single. Fitzgerald usually performed with a trio or quartet, but there were also appearances with larger groups, such as the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras. By the 1960s Fitzgerald had become wealthy enough to retire, but the love of performing drove her on — she appeared regularly until just a couple of years before her death in 1996. Sidemen came and went, but except when health problems intervened she performed as much as humanly possible, sometimes singing concerts in two different cities in one day. Source: Verve Music (Phil Bailey). Excerpted from Ken Burns’ Jazz: The Definitive Ella Fitzgerald

This album contains no booklet.