1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Respectable Effort, September 14, 2011
This review is from: The Best Is Yet to Come (Audio CD)
I became a fan of Ella's when I was 12 years old (I am now 33) when I purchased The Irving Berlin Songbook on cassette. I now have over two dozen Ella CD's including the complete songbook series and most of her Pablo albums as well. I listen to her Pablo records on occasion, but they are hopelessly inferior to her Verve records, and none are essential listening. Ella's voice aged badly, and prematurely at that, largely due to years of overuse and drastic weight loss in her 50's, creating the infamous wobble. On this undeserved Grammy winning album (Sarah Vaughan absolutely should have won for Crazy and Mixed Up), Ella was 64 and sounded 74. She is listenable, and hints of her skill are still evident, but she is not impressive. She certainly adds nothing to God Bless the Child, but title tune is very good, and her Any Old Time is as lovely as Nelson Riddle's orchestra is stellar. This respectable effort is really for completists, not for neophites, not even newcomers to her later work.
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