Listening, Party For Two: Ella Fitzgerald Live

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

My boss readily admits that she doesn't know a whole lot about jazz. But she lets me write all this nonsense on the Internet, so I'm not complaining. And at least she's willing to learn. So every week -- or at least as often as possible -- she and I get together to listen to and Instant Message about a different great jazz song.

I've been nudged several times by Ms. Boss Lady about our relative lack of coverage of jazz singers on the blog. To assure her that I actually do love vocalists -- when they're good -- I pulled one of Ella Fitzgerald's standout performances: a 1960 live set recorded in West Berlin. As you can hear, it's at very least a tour de force of vocal improvisation.

"How High The Moon," from Ella Fitzgerald, The Complete Ella In Berlin (Verve). Ella Fitzgerald, vocals; Paul Smith, piano; Wilfred Middlebrooks, bass; Gus Johnson, drums. West Berlin, Germany: Feb. 13, 1960.

Purchase: Amazon.com / Amazon MP3 / iTunes

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Boss Lady: A singer! Patrick, you're going soft.

me: Pretty soon, I'll be listening to smooth jazz in a bubble bath.

Boss Lady: With a glass of wine.

me: Well, you keep asking me: "Aren't there any singers in jazz?" So I've pulled a command performance for you.

Boss Lady: That's my way of razzing you. It seems that there's a category of jazz freak (said in the most loving way) who thinks that singers are somehow not interesting or are not serious enough.
And I've noticed that there isn't much discussion of vocalists on A Blog Supreme so far.

me: All true perceptions. I think the former ought to be qualified though --
See, within a certain category of jazz freak which I may or may not belong to, we venerate certain jazz singers, and appreciate the work of many others.

Boss Lady: So you're saying you reserve your declarations of love for singers for more private conversations, not public forums? Are you embarrassed?

me: I'm proud to say I think Ella Fitzgerald is a genius.
But there's a lower barrier to entry into jazz singing than, say, playing the trombone. Which tends to glut the market with ... you get the picture.
Plus, everybody loves singing. So jazz singers are often presented by their marketers and producers in artistically compromising ways -- in misguided attempts to hit that crossover audience. So it's harder to pick the wheat from the chaff.

Boss Lady: Sure, but it's an opportunity for you to help people walk through the thicket. And, as you say, the big picture is that "everybody loves singing."

me: There's little doubt that Ella is the real deal, though. Or, based on this performance, do you think otherwise?

Boss Lady: This is a live performance, right?

me: It is. Live in, of all places, West Berlin, in 1960.

Boss Lady: Sometimes, singers are able to pull off the astonishing feat of making it sound like they're singing just for you. That's not the case here. This is very much a performance for a crowd.

me: Indeed. I think that may be a recorded music vs. live music question. Jazz has always had a funny relationship with recording ...

Boss Lady: This performance seems to be a lot about having fun with variation and improvisation.

me: In any event, if you were at all wondering about Ella's credentials as a 1) raw vocal talent 2) musical performer, they're all answered here.

Boss Lady: Well she's certainly virtuosic! It's like she's taking on the trumpet part.

me: Or at times, the tenor too -- she had some incredible range.

Boss Lady: It's kind of madcap, like one of those old movie musicals with a wonderfully wacky, complicated and fun dance number. And what is she doing with her voice down low at around 5:30 in? Sounds dangerous.

me: Hey, I don't know, but it's kinda hip -- her energy and humor certainly sells it.
When you say "wacky," what do you mean?

Boss Lady: It's a technical term for playful, surprising and on the edge of goofy.

me: Ha, ha.

Boss Lady: So I figured out what that low part sounds like: a Tuvan throat singer.

me: I don't think she studied with any of those, but you know, jazz is full of surprises.
As she does her improvisation, do you hear just how many other tunes she's quoting?

Boss Lady: I'm sorry (and sad) to say, no.

me: Surely, you heard "Poinciana" (start of the scat solo), or "Stormy Weather," or "Rhapsody In Blue," or "I Want To Be Happy," or "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" (her first hit in the '30s), or the interpolation of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" as "Sweat Gets In Your Eyes" at the end ...

Boss Lady: Looks like I'd better listen again. Because I was focused on Ella's voice and her pyrotechnics, but all of those references flew by unnoticed. Sigh.

me: ...or Ferde Grofe's "On The Trail," or the Ethel Waters number "Tropical Heat Wave," or "El Manicero," or even a Charlie Parker tune called "Confirmation" "Ornithology" which was based on the chord changes to this song.

Boss Lady: OK, OK, just rub it in!

me: There are more which I don't know the names of ...
But the point is that she's having fun. Sort of free-associating -- trying to throw out pop-cultural references.

Boss Lady: It's funny -- I got the essence of it, but not the punchlines. Gives me a reason to have another listen!
You know, I'm also surprised by how edgy her voice sounds.

me: It's a live environment, she's going for broke -- sure.
It's not the smooth, burrow-in-your-ear Ella of the records she made around this time.
To set this in a sort of historical context, the '50s and '60s were when Fitzgerald experienced her greatest successes on disc.
She worked with an influential producer named Norman Granz to produce "songbook" albums -- interpreting the oeuvres of composers like Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, etc.

Boss Lady: Even I've heard of those recordings.

me: It also brought her into superstar sessions with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, etc.
This concert was released by Norman Granz's Verve Records -- but it has little of the studio craft, string sections, and so forth of the albums.

Boss Lady: So here's she's letting loose.

me: In the tune before this one in the concert, "Mack The Knife," she forgets the lyrics, but makes up new ones on the spot -- and she has everyone buying it because she's so strong and delivers so well.
Around :53 there's a similar thing going on.

Boss Lady: She's treating the live performance as something completely different than a record. Some artists seem much more liable to repeat their recordings exactly on stage.
Maybe they feel that's what their audience wants ...
Or maybe Ella just had an extraordinary ability to be alive and in the moment in a live setting. Is that what she's known for?

me: One of the things, for sure.
Also, for almost all jazz performers in history, there's little money in recording.
You may do 250 gigs a year performing, and 5 in the studio.
That and the fact that this is a music which is based largely on improvisation -- which seems to demand the live experience in order to really "get."
Of course, sometimes when you have hits, audiences demand you recreate those.
But most jazz performers in history can't recreate the exact way they did it on the recording, and don't care to. They see what they do as a live performance art.
Ella's records did sell well, of course, which makes it all the better that she brings it, raw and uncut, to stage.

Boss Lady: Patrick, I'm beginning to see why you played this for me. It must be your way of getting me to agree to letting you go out to more shows and spend less time at the office?

me: Have I told you how good your hair looks today?

3:15 PM ET | 10-23-2009 | permalink

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