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Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers And Hart Songbook
 
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Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers And Hart Songbook [Box set, Original recording remastered]

Ella Fitzgerald Audio CD
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Biography

Of all the critiques that have been written about Ella Fitzgerald, East Coast music critic Tony Mastrianni’s perhaps best defined her very special song stylings. “In the case of Ella Fitzgerald you have something unique. There continues to be no one like her, no one who uses a voice so completely like a musical instrument. . . . She can stray from the melody, sing around it, and over and under it,… Read more in Amazon's Ella Fitzgerald Store

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Frequently Bought Together

Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers And Hart Songbook + Sings The Irving Berlin Song Book + Sings The Harold Arlen Song Book
Price For All Three: £29.71

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Product details

  • Audio CD (25 May 1999)
  • Number of Discs: 2
  • Format: Box set, Original recording remastered
  • Label: Decca (UMO)
  • ASIN: B0000047EH
  • Other Editions: MP3 Download
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 61,470 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s

Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or view the MP3 Album.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         


Disc 1:

Samples
Song Title Time Price
Listen  1. Have You Met Miss Jones? 3:40£0.89
Listen  2. You Took Advantage Of Me 3:27£0.89
Listen  3. A Ship Without A Sail 4:07£0.89
Listen  4. To Keep My Love Alive 3:33£0.89
Listen  5. Dancing On The Ceiling 4:06£0.89
Listen  6. The Lady Is A Tramp 3:21£0.89
Listen  7. With A Song In My Heart 2:43£0.89
Listen  8. Manhattan 2:48£0.89
Listen  9. Johnny One Note 2:11£0.89
Listen10. I Wish I Were In Love Again 2:36£0.89
Listen11. Spring Is Here 3:38£0.89
Listen12. It Never Entered My Mind 4:05£0.89
Listen13. This Can't Be Love 2:54£0.89
Listen14. Thou Swell 2:02£0.89
Listen15. My Romance 3:42£0.89
Listen16. Where Or When 2:46£0.89
Listen17. Little Girl Blue 3:52£0.89


Disc 2:

Samples
Song Title Time Price
Listen  1. Give It Back To The Indians 3:10£0.89
Listen  2. Ten Cents A Dance 4:06£0.89
Listen  3. There's A Small Hotel 2:48£0.89
Listen  4. I Didn't Know What Time It Was 3:46£0.89
Listen  5. Ev'rything I've Got 3:21£0.89
Listen  6. I Could Write A Book 3:38£0.89
Listen  7. The Blue Room 2:29£0.69
Listen  8. My Funny Valentine 3:52£0.89
Listen  9. Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered 6:53£0.89
Listen10. Mountain Greenery 2:14£0.89
Listen11. Wait Till You See Her 1:29£0.89
Listen12. Lover 3:16£0.89
Listen13. Isn't It Romantic? 3:00£0.89
Listen14. Here In My Arms 1:52£0.89
Listen15. Blue Moon 3:11£0.89
Listen16. My Heart Stood Still 3:03£0.89
Listen17. I've Got Five Dollars 2:39£0.89
Listen18. Lover (Mono Version) 3:15£0.89


Product Description

Only Frank Sinatra has put his indelible stamp on as many pages of the American Popular Songbook as Ella Fitzgerald. But while Sinatra specialized in mood-themed albums (his composer-based collections were compiled from material already released), Fitzgerald's ambitious songbooks devoted themselves to one great songwriter after another: Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, and so on. Her two-volume Rodgers and Hart project ranks with the best, and if Buddy Bergman's arrangements are a bit sweeter than his Cole Porter settings, or Nelson Riddle's Gershwin treatments, they suit the material just fine. And what a wide range of material it is (with original verses intact!), intermingling novelty show tunes ("Give It Back to the Indians," "Johnny One Note"), sophisticated standards ("Manhattan," "Blue Moon," "The Lady Is a Tramp"), and lush ballads ("Isn't It Romantic," "It Never Entered My Mind"). But the most exquisite thing Fitzgerald ever recorded is her seven-minute "Bewitched" (a.k.a. "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered") on volume 2, casting a spell of hushed reverie that makes time stand still. --Jim Emerson

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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
77 of 77 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Audio CD
Although neither the first nor the most fêted of Ella Fitzgerald's Songbooks, this collection drawn from the huge output of Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers is unquestionably the best. What sets the Rodgers and Hart Songbook apart from the other albums in the series that Ella recorded for Norman Granz's Verve label, quite simply, is the quality of the material that she had to work with. Her voice was such a magisterial instrument and her command of the expressive power of words so subtle that she seldom performed anything which drew on the full scope all her abilities. In the course of this double album, we get to see every facet of her talent. With Hart and Rodgers, Ella's enormous generosity of spirit, her love for song and for singing, her sheer humanity are put wholeheartedly at the disposal of very great music. Make no mistake, this is a desert island album.

Richard Rodgers is most widely known for his nicely conceived but largely undemanding settings of the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein - above all, perhaps, in 'Oklahoma' and 'The Sound of Music.' However, it has been recognised by many, especially jazz musicians, that Rodgers' earlier work with Lorenz Hart shows the full measure of his talents. When he worked with Hammerstein, the lyrics came first: the notoriously elusive Hart, on the other hand, preferred to write words for tunes that had already been composed. Before he was constrained by Hammerstein's trite little rhymes, Rodgers produced pieces that, among the great Broadway composers, are equalled in melodic suppleness and harmonic variety only by Jerome Kern. Hart, in return, wrote lyrics that are by turns scintillating in their wit and searing in their poignancy. Some of his experiments in rhyme are deliciously knowing: "Beans could get no keener re/ception in a beanery ... We could find no cleaner re/treat from life's machinery"; "The city's clamor can never spoil/ The dreams of a boy and 'goil'"; "When love congeals/ It soon reveals/ The faint aroma of performing seals,/ The double-crossing of a pair of heels"; and so on. Yet what ultimately makes Hart's lyrics so great is their apparent naturalness. There is a conversational ease about all his words, and he never needed to mangle sentences for the sake of scanning or rhyming. Song never seemed so unforced an extension of normal speech, and therefore never so touching.

Ella Fitzgerald is famed primarily for up-tempo performances which showcased the sweetness and zest of her superbly flexible voice. We certainly see plenty of evidence of Ella's vocal brightness in the Rodgers & Hart Songbook. In numbers such as 'Mountain Greenery,' 'Manhattan' and 'I Wish I Were In Love Again' (from which the above quotes are drawn) her voice dances above the exuberant charts of Buddy Bregman, who was responsible for the bulk of the orchestral arrangements in this set. Yet Ella's delicacy in handling tender sentiment, romanticism and wistfulness - in the ballads, or 'pretty' numbers as she called them - is not sufficiently acknowledged, even today. For anyone who remains sceptical, this double album offers wonderful examples of all of these mellower and darker shades of feeling. 'With A Song In My Heart,' one of Rodgers' loveliest melodies offset by a ravishing extended musical metaphor from Hart, shows just how warm and embracing Ella's voice could be. Similarly, she conveys fully the dreamy romanticism of such songs as 'Where or When' and 'Blue Moon.' In the saddest of the songs - above all, perhaps, the heart-wrending 'Little Girl Blue' - Ella proves that conspicuous emotion is not always as telling as subdued emotion. Lorenz Hart recognised this, for his lyrics rarely wear their heart on their sleeve. To my mind, the greatness of Ella Fitzgerald is that she can touch you to your heart's core without any mannerism or straining after effect (of the kind often all too evident in the work of Billie Holliday): the simplicity of her renderings can in itself move you to tears, and beyond tears.

It's hard to think of a down-side to this collection. If I have one very, very minor complaint, it is that Buddy Bregman, though workmanlike, is not as effective an arranger across the emotional range as other collaborators such as Nelson Riddle, Paul Weston, Frank DeVol or, of course, Duke Ellington. Having said that , his contribution to the brighter sides is splendid; in particular, he helps to make Ella's recording of 'Manhattan' so memorable that it is really impossible to imagine any other. On some tracks Ella works with a smaller group, in arrangements by the pianist Paul Smith, and in one case alone with the guitarist Barney Kessel. The Smith arrangements, and the jamming sessions with his quartet, are amongst the best in the collection - in particular, the brilliantly witty treatment of Rodgers' and Hart's last, darkly comic song, 'To Keep My Love Alive,' and the torch-song-with-a-sting-in-the-tail, 'Bewitched.'

For those who are put off by the (very moderate) price of the Master Edition double album, and would rather test the water by buying half of the collection first - don't. The restoration of the original running order, the excellent accompanying information and the attractive presentation of the new edition all help to justify the larger outlay. The real reason for treating yourself, however, is that you will, I guarantee, get to the end of the second CD and wish that there were another thirty-four songs to follow.

If you only ever intend to buy one of the Verve songbooks, make it this one.

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Fantastic.... 8 Mar 2004
By A Customer
Format:Audio CD
I have always been a fan of the Great Ella, and was bought this CD for my birthday last year. Although possessing other CD's by Ella I had never experienced her in such glory until I received this album. Although consistently amazing this CD is, in my humble opinion, worth buying solely for the recording of With a Song in My Heart. A fabulous song, a brilliant voice - a desert island disc!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Dr. H. A. Jones TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:MP3 Download
Here we are treated to 34 R & H tunes (and a reprise of `Lover') with the backing and arrangements again of Buddy Bregman who accompanied Ella on the Cole Porter selection.
Rodgers and Hart produced a great many more shows than Rodgers with his second lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein, though both collaborations lasted for some 17 years. The producer, Norman Granz, had a wonderful selection of tunes to pick from: `Spring is here', `My romance', `The blue room', `Where or when' are probably amongst the best known, but there are many, many more lovely tunes and lyrics. Some of the tunes are not best suited to Ella, like `Have you met Miss Jones' and `The lady is a tramp'; but `Ten cents a dance' is perfect.

It's interesting how different are the tunes Rodgers composed with Hart, who put words to Rodgers' melodies, compared with Rodgers writing tunes to Hammerstein's words. This is a lovely selection from the American Song Book and I for one am delighted to have it available on CD, especially since for many years now I've been presenting programmes of music for friends. The sound quality is so much better than on LP and it is so much easier to pick out specific tunes to play.
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