Ella Fitzgerald - The Very Best of the Song Books

Considered near the pinnacle of vocal jazz (along with Frank Sinatra's string of Capitol LPs), Ella Fitzgerald's eight Verve songbooks codified the canon of American Popular Song (uppercased) and continued to prove the best venue for learning what that phrase meant even 50 years after its genesis. (It's no wonder that the series even caused no less a figure than Ira Gershwin to amend the Constitution, so to speak, and suggest for Fitzgerald alone a few changes in the lyrics of his classics.) Despite their high pedigree, however, the songbooks are difficult to approach. Read More