Artist spotlight: our top 5 Ella Fitzgerald songs

Published: 04 Jul 2024

At the end of the month, Down for the Count are heading to The Pheasantry - the Pizza Express jazz club on Chelsea's King's Road - for a three night residency, where we'll be celebrating the music of Louis Armstrong, Nat 'King' Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and many more. 

We did a similar residency last year and wrote about Nat King Cole at the time - so this year, we thought we'd focus on Ella Fitzgerald, who as "The First Lady of Song" was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time.

Read on to find out our band leader Mike's top Ella Fitzgerald songs (in no particular order).

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Georgia on my Mind

 

"Probably my favourite Ella Fitzgerald recording is her version of Hoagy Carmichael's Georgia on my Mind. It's from the album Ella Swings Gently With Nelson - one of two albums that Nelson Riddle arranged for Ella Fitzgerald in 1962. Everything about the arrangement is fantastic - the big band, led by Conrad Gozzo on trumpet, just swings so hard and the slow swing feel is  irresistible. I also love the little alto saxophone solo in the middle, competing against the raging brass... and the ending raises the hairs on the back of your neck.

"However I'm always a little sad that the band wasn't recorded better - to me, it almost sounds like they are at the other side of Union Station from Ella Fitzgerald. I can only imagine that Norman Granz (the Verve Records producer) was saving a bit of money and cutting corners with the recording - he certainly had a reputation for rushing recordings. Luckily the talent of Ella, Nelson and the band shines through and the recording wasn't ruined. Ella and Nelson had a huge mutual admiration for each other - according to drummer Stan Levey, who performed on some of the Fitzgerald/Riddle sessions, "Ella loved Nelson, and thought he was the greatest... they had a very real camaraderie".

"This version of Georgia on my Mind is a song that we often perform live in Down for the Count shows, and it always gets a huge round of applause because the arrangement is just stunning."

 

Embraceable You

 

"Same singer, same arranger... but what a different sound Embraceable You has, which really demonstrates how incredibly versatile Ella and Nelson were. The song was one of 53 (!) that Ella and Nelson recorded for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook, recorded throughout 1959 (Nelson also arranged an additional 6 Gershwin instrumentals, bringing the final song tally to an unprecedented 59). No corners were cut here, and the orchestra sound just sublime. Nelson Riddle's string writing was out of this world, and there are a few things that particularly stand out about the arrangement to me. Firstly, the strings are all playing with mutes for the whole song - which you don't hear all that often in a jazz context. It gives the strings a lighter, almost ethereal feel, that is just magical. Secondly, the instrumental in the middle starts off as a soli for the violas and cellos - something else that you don't get that often in this kind of music, and I just love it.

"I also find it interesting just how little Ella Fitzgerald does with the vocal line. She was known throughout her career for singing the melodies more-or-less as written (compare that to Frank Sinatra, who would often rephrase and reinterpret vocal lines - with admittedly great success). For me, Ella's approach to a song like this really demonstrates how, in the context of music, less can very often be more.

"According to Nelson Riddle biographer Peter J. Levinson, all told Ella and Nelson recorded 132 tracks together on 11 albums over a period of 23 years. Picking just two has been quite a challenge - also check out 'S Wonderful and All of Me for some big, straight-ahead swing tunes they recorded together.

 

Mack The Knife

"What else can I say... I just LOVE this recording. I heard it for the first ever time in 2010, when a swing DJ called Terry Elliott played it at a Jive Aces outdoor concert, and I went home and bought the album straight away. It's a live recording with the Duke Ellington band at the Côte d'Azur festival... the first time I heard it, I thought it swung harder than anything I had ever heard before (to be honest, I still think that!).

"I find this 1966 performance particularly interesting because 9 years before, Ella Fitzgerald recorded a Songbook album with Duke Ellington - singing Duke's songs, with Duke's band. By all accounts, the session was a disaster - Duke Ellington, genius that he was, arrived at the session completely unprepared and Ella was reportedly in tears as the session started to fall apart (the fact that the resulting album is passable is pretty astonishing). 

"I also love comparing this recording of Mack the Knife to another famous Ella recording of the same song - actually probably a more famous one, from Ella in Berlin, where Ella completely forgot the words and is making most of it up!

 

Mr. Paganini

"I couldn't leave out this song, which is quite a special one for Down for the Count - we perform it in lots of shows with both our All-Stars band and our Orchestra (with an original arrangement written by me). Mr Paganini was first recorded in 1936 and it's a song that she returned to over and over again in her career. It was originally derided as a novelty song, but that clearly didn't put Ella off as she loved performing this song - as do we!"

 

Take the 'A' Train

 

"I couldn't make a list of great Ella Fitzgerald recordings and not include one of her legendary extended scats - which Ella did better than just about anyone else. I really, really love this live recording of Take the 'A' Train from Live in Hollywood, 1961. I love how inventive and playful she is, and when she slips in a bit of Chattanooga Choo Choo (at 4:12) I can never help but smile.

"An interesting observation often made about Ella Fitzgerald is that she was one of very few musicians from the heyday of the Swing Era (the 1930s, pre-World War 2) who adapted and moulded her style to the sounds of bop music after the war - she could hold her own as an improviser amongst bop pioneers such as Dizzy Gillespie, which can be heard in recordings such as this. 

"When touring, Ella would often have a very small band with her - often just a trio of piano, bass and drums. It's quite striking how few instrumental solos there are (bearing in mind that these were some of the top players of their day) - the show really was all about Ella, who had incredible stage presence and who was adored and respected by so many of her fellow musicians."

 

Blue Skies

"On the subject of scat singing, check out Ella Fitzgerald's amazing scat on Irving Berlin's Blue Skies. It's probably one of the most famous scat solos of all time, making it quite surprising that it was originally left off of the Irving Berlin Songbook album (apparently because it didn't really fit with the rest of the album).

"I love how the arrangement, written by Paul Weston, builds - the first chorus features Harry 'Sweets' Edison on Harmon-muted trumpet, having a musical conversation with Ella; then the arrangement builds with each section of the big band entering in turn. First the saxophones enter backing Ella, then the trombones enter with a complementary figure whilst the saxophones continue theirs; then finally the trumpets enter with a third figure. It's so simple and yet so effective, building the arrangement to a crescendo which is just fabulous." 

 

Lush Life

"My 7th choice - originally this article was going to be my Top 5 Ella songs, then I remembered these last two and just couldn't leave them out - is a recording of Ella Fitzgerald and the legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson playing Billy Strayhorn's Lush Life. It's a very unusual jazz standard (described by jazz critic Ted Gioia as "an art song, not a pop song") and I think that this is probably my favourite recording of it. It's a formidably hard song to perform - Frank Sinatra famously tried and failed to record it.

"Billy Strayhorn wrote the song in his teens and it's really quite special; particularly in the hands of Ella and Oscar (who happened to both be managed by Norman Granz, leading to many joint Ella and Oscar performances). I love how Oscar accompanies Ella here - Oscar usually made the piano dance playing a million notes a minute, but here he uses the full dynamic range of the instrument. He starts with an almost symphonic introduction and then gently accompanies Ella - with beautiful rolling chords in the song's chorus, and the odd little moment of flair (such as a moment of cocktail piano at an appropriate moment in the verse)."

 

Many of these songs will be performed by Down for the Count at our 3-night Pizza Express Live residency, Ella, Louis, Nat & More, in July and August 2024.

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