Customer Reviews

These Are the Blues

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As many of Ella's fans know, she was known for her flawless and perfect interpretation of great jazz standards and American pop. However, her ability to interepret a blues lyric flawlessly and give it the same meaning as a Billie Holiday, is often overlooked. With this album, Ella sounds as if she has spent her entire career wailin' the blues. What a great album from the First Lady of Song!

This Ella Fitzgerald album from 1964 is one of her most brilliant and overlooked albums. Ella's first full-length dive into the blues is a sublime one. Known for her swinging and impeccable balladry, it is little wonder Ella was just right to sing the blues. Man, how she sings them! This recording is perfect for the Ella fan looking for something a little different. For the beginning Ella fans, please buy one of her flawless "Songbooks" (you take your pick) and come back to this one later on in your collecting. Ella truly was THE singers' singer!

Many people will know Ella from her incredible versions of many of the finest American popular songs , but there was another side to Ella and she lets it loose on this album .

She sounds relaxed and confident singing some low down blues , spelling it out for the men she is addressing in these tunes .
She tells it like it is , man !

It is one of the first albums I ever heard by Ella and her albums of popular songs sounded a lot less relaxed somehow to my ears , after hearing this .

I encourage those who are blues fans or who wish to hear Ella singing something where she does more improvising to purchase this disc .

Ella shows that she can sing the blues with the best of 'em. These songs have a slow, intense burning energy that is the hallmark of great blues performances.

A singing teacher once asked me, "What is the most expressive musical instrument of all?" That's right - the human voice. If you ever doubted it, then listen to this album. Ella's voice has got it all: Every shade of expression, every emotional innuendo.

A good place to start is "St Louis Blues". You've probably heard it a thousand times - maybe even played as a march by a Sousa band. Ella slows it right down and delivers it as a real blues - sung from the heart. Don't know where she got her lyrics from, but she extends the song by many verses and adds a wry humour to it. Other high-lights include "In The Evening When The Sun Goes Down" with Davis belting out an extended full-fisted chordal solo on organ, and "Trouble In Mind" which Ella introduces with a kind of jazz vocal cadenza, slithering and sliding thru the minor thirds.

Sometimes in music it all comes together: The producer, the vocalist, the arrangements, the backup musicians, mesh to form a coherent whole. This is such an album. The players are all masters of their instruments, Davis, Eldridge, Brown, Ellis and Johnson - and of course Ella, mistress of the human voice. Here is real rapport - they fit together musically like a group of old friends.

Six superb musicians in a New York studio, talking to each other thru their instruments. This is Jazz. These are The Blues. It does not get any better than this...

As others have mentioned, this is an often overlooked gem of Ella's. Coming from the "jazz" Ella, it took a couple of listenings before this became one of my all-time favorite Ella CD's. It is my personal opinion that what gets Ella's interpretations of these blues classics across to the listener is the very thing she's so well-known for - her jazz roots. Her flexibility and artistic timing play as important role in these recordings as her more popular and exhaustive "Songbook" series. Whether you are a diehard Ella fan, or someone who wants to hear some real blues done by one this country's most celebrated vocalists, you owe it to yourself to add this to your collection.