Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Have You Met Miss Jones? - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
2. You Took Advantage Of Me - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
3. A Ship Without A Sail - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
4. To Keep My Love Alive - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Alan Emig, Paul Smith, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, Alvin Stoller
5. Dancing On The Ceiling - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
6. The Lady Is A Tramp - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
7. With A Song In My Heart - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Paul Smith, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, Alvin Stoller, Alan Emig
8. Manhattan - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
9. Johnny One Note - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
10. I Wish I Were In Love Again - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
11. Spring Is Here - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
12. It Never Entered My Mind - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
13. This Can't Be Love - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
14. Thou Swell - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
15. My Romance - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
16. Where Or When - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
17. Little Girl Blue - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig

Disc 2:

1. Give It Back To The Indians - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
2. Ten Cents A Dance - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
3. There's A Small Hotel - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
4. I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
5. Ev'rything I've Got - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Paul Smith, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, Alvin Stoller, Alan Emig
6. I Could Write A Book - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
7. The Blue Room - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
8. My Funny Valentine - Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Norman Granz, Alan Emig
9. Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Val Valentin, Paul Smith, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, Alvin Stoller
10. Mountain Greenery - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
11. Wait Till You See Her - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Barney Kessel, Alan Emig
12. Lover - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
13. Isn't It Romantic? - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
14. Here In My Arms - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Alan Emig, Buddy Bregman Orchestra
15. Blue Moon - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
16. My Heart Stood Still - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
17. I've Got Five Dollars - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig
18. Lover - Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Granz, Buddy Bregman Orchestra, Alan Emig

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35383 in Music
• Released on: 1999-05-25
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .33 pounds
• Running time: 112 minutes

CD Description
This was the 2nd of the Song Books that Ella Fitzgerald recorded for the Verve label in the mid 50s. The brilliant Nelson Riddle hadn't yet signed on, but Verve staff arranger Buddy Bregman was fully up to the task of providing musical settings for Ella's letter-perfect readings of these lyrical and witty gems. Fitzgerald's voice, with it's uncanny bell-like timbre was the perfect vehicle for conveying the sheer beauty of "Spring Is Here", "It Never Entered My Mind", "I Could Write A Book" et al. On the other side, the exuberant "TheLady Is A Tramp" beats Sinatra at his own swingin' game yetretains, yes, a ladylike dignity which characterises Ella Fitzgerald even when she was having the most fun.

Customer Reviews

Dual perfection - the finest songs, the finest singer
Although neither the first nor the most fêted of Ella Fitzgerald's Songbooks, this collection drawn from the huge output of Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers is unquestionably the best. What sets the Rodgers and Hart Songbook apart from the other albums in the series that Ella recorded for Norman Granz's Verve label, quite simply, is the quality of the material that she had to work with. Her voice was such a magisterial instrument and her command of the expressive power of words so subtle that she seldom performed anything which drew on the full scope all her abilities. In the course of this double album, we get to see every facet of her talent. With Hart and Rodgers, Ella's enormous generosity of spirit, her love for song and for singing, her sheer humanity are put wholeheartedly at the disposal of very great music. Make no mistake, this is a desert island album.

Richard Rodgers is most widely known for his nicely conceived but largely undemanding settings of the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein - above all, perhaps, in 'Oklahoma' and 'The Sound of Music.' However, it has been recognised by many, especially jazz musicians, that Rodgers' earlier work with Lorenz Hart shows the full measure of his talents. When he worked with Hammerstein, the lyrics came first: the notoriously elusive Hart, on the other hand, preferred to write words for tunes that had already been composed. Before he was constrained by Hammerstein's trite little rhymes, Rodgers produced pieces that, among the great Broadway composers, are equalled in melodic suppleness and harmonic variety only by Jerome Kern. Hart, in return, wrote lyrics that are by turns scintillating in their wit and searing in their poignancy. Some of his experiments in rhyme are deliciously knowing: "Beans could get no keener re/ception in a beanery ... We could find no cleaner re/treat from life's machinery"; "The city's clamor can never spoil/ The dreams of a boy and 'goil'"; "When love congeals/ It soon reveals/ The faint aroma of performing seals,/ The double-crossing of a pair of heels"; and so on. Yet what ultimately makes Hart's lyrics so great is their apparent naturalness. There is a conversational ease about all his words, and he never needed to mangle sentences for the sake of scanning or rhyming. Song never seemed so unforced an extension of normal speech, and therefore never so touching.

Ella Fitzgerald is famed primarily for up-tempo performances which showcased the sweetness and zest of her superbly flexible voice. We certainly see plenty of evidence of Ella's vocal brightness in the Rodgers & Hart Songbook. In numbers such as 'Mountain Greenery,' 'Manhattan' and 'I Wish I Were In Love Again' (from which the above quotes are drawn) her voice dances above the exuberant charts of Buddy Bregman, who was responsible for the bulk of the orchestral arrangements in this set. Yet Ella's delicacy in handling tender sentiment, romanticism and wistfulness - in the ballads, or 'pretty' numbers as she called them - is not sufficiently acknowledged, even today. For anyone who remains sceptical, this double album offers wonderful examples of all of these mellower and darker shades of feeling. 'With A Song In My Heart,' one of Rodgers' loveliest melodies offset by a ravishing extended musical metaphor from Hart, shows just how warm and embracing Ella's voice could be. Similarly, she conveys fully the dreamy romanticism of such songs as 'Where or When' and 'Blue Moon.' In the saddest of the songs - above all, perhaps, the heart-wrending 'Little Girl Blue' - Ella proves that conspicuous emotion is not always as telling as subdued emotion. Lorenz Hart recognised this, for his lyrics rarely wear their heart on their sleeve. To my mind, the greatness of Ella Fitzgerald is that she can touch you to your heart's core without any mannerism or straining after effect (of the kind often all too evident in the work of Billie Holliday): the simplicity of her renderings can in itself move you to tears, and beyond tears.

It's hard to think of a down-side to this collection. If I have one very, very minor complaint, it is that Buddy Bregman, though workmanlike, is not as effective an arranger across the emotional range as other collaborators such as Nelson Riddle, Paul Weston, Frank DeVol or, of course, Duke Ellington. Having said that , his contribution to the brighter sides is splendid; in particular, he helps to make Ella's recording of 'Manhattan' so memorable that it is really impossible to imagine any other. On some tracks Ella works with a smaller group, in arrangements by the pianist Paul Smith, and in one case alone with the guitarist Barney Kessel. The Smith arrangements, and the jamming sessions with his quartet, are amongst the best in the collection - in particular, the brilliantly witty treatment of Rodgers' and Hart's last, darkly comic song, 'To Keep My Love Alive,' and the torch-song-with-a-sting-in-the-tail, 'Bewitched.'

For those who are put off by the (very moderate) price of the Master Edition double album, and would rather test the water by buying half of the collection first - don't. The restoration of the original running order, the excellent accompanying information and the attractive presentation of the new edition all help to justify the larger outlay. The real reason for treating yourself, however, is that you will, I guarantee, get to the end of the second CD and wish that there were another thirty-four songs to follow.

If you only ever intend to buy one of the Verve songbooks, make it this one.

Fantastic....
I have always been a fan of the Great Ella, and was bought this CD for my birthday last year. Although possessing other CD's by Ella I had never experienced her in such glory until I received this album. Although consistently amazing this CD is, in my humble opinion, worth buying solely for the recording of With a Song in My Heart. A fabulous song, a brilliant voice - a desert island disc!