2014 Program Notes, Book 5 39
ELLA, LOUIS AND ALL THAT JAZZ
celebrates
the legacy of two giants of American music
— Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) and Louis
Armstrong (1901-1971). They received virtually
every conceivable honor — she won thirteen
Grammys, sold 40 million albums, received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, lifetime awards
from the Recording Academy, NAACP and the
Society of Singers, and honorary doctorates from
Dartmouth, Talladega, Howard, Princeton and Yale; he was inducted into the DownBeat,
Rock and Roll, Grammy and ASCAP halls of fame, included among the “100 Most
Influential People of the 20th Century” by
Life
,
Time
and
Variety
, and had a large park and
the airport in New Orleans named for him; the U.S. Postal Service issued commemorative
stamps in honor of both — but their most enduring gift is the way they embodied and
shared America’s music and spirit with the world.
ELLA, LOUIS AND ALL THAT JAZZ
recaptures the music, the aura and the joy of the collaboration of two of America’s greatest
musical artists.
By the time Armstrong and Fitzgerald first met in the early 1940s, he was universally
acknowledged as the most influential jazz musician in America and she was establishing
her international reputation as “The First Lady of Song.” Armstrong began his career
playing in clubs in his native New Orleans before joining King Oliver’s band in Chicago in
1922. After playing with Fletcher Henderson’s big band in New York in 1924, he returned to
Chicago to record traditional NewOrleans jazz for Okeh Records. The recordings he made
with his “Hot Five” established him as the first jazz superstar and jazz as an American art
form. Armstrong toured and recorded incessantly thereafter, was featured on Broadway
in
Hot Chocolates
in 1929 soloing in Fats Waller’s
Ain’t Misbehavin’
, began appearing in
Hollywood films in 1930, and in 1937 became the first African-American to host a national
radio program. He was a winner of the first
Esquire
jazz poll in 1944.
Fitzgerald, born in Newport News, Virginia and raised by her mother in Yonkers, New
York, had a difficult childhood that included a brief time in an orphanage. She broke into
show business by winning an amateur talent contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater when
she was seventeen. She auditioned successfully for drummer Chick Webb’s popular
band the following year and almost immediately began recording with them. Fitzgerald
started performing with such leading jazz artists as Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson,
and in 1938 had her first hit record with an upbeat version of the nursery rhyme
A-Tisket,
A-Tasket
, which sold a million copies, hit number one, and stayed on the pop charts for
seventeen weeks. When Webb died in 1939, Fitzgerald took over his band under her own
name and performed and recorded with the group for the next three years. In 1942, she
began the solo career that made her one of the 20th-century’s most popular and admired
musical personalities.
In January 1946, when the recording business began to flourish again after World War
II, Armstrong and Fitzgerald teamed up for their first project together, two 78 RPM sides for
Decca. They collaborated occasionally during the following years (including appearances
on Bing Crosby’s TV show in 1951 and at the Hollywood Bowl in 1956), but made their
most indelible contribution together to popular music when they recorded eleven ballads
with Oscar Peterson’s quartet for Verve in August 1956 for the LP album
Ella and Louis
.
The release met with extraordinary critical and popular success, and the following year this
incomparable duo recorded the two–LP set
Ella and Louis Again
, as well as a pioneering
jazz treatment of selections from Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess
. “The pinnacle of popular
singing” the releases were called by David Jasen and Gene Jones in their 2001 survey of
ragtime and early jazz.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
