| Ella in Rome: The Birthday Concert | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Live album by | ||||
| Released | 1988 | |||
| Recorded | April 25, 1958 in Rome, Italy | |||
| Genre | Jazz | |||
| Length | 60:48 | |||
| Label | Verve | |||
| Producer | Norman Granz | |||
| Ella Fitzgerald chronology | ||||
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Ella in Rome: The Birthday Concert is a live album by Ella Fitzgerald, with a jazz trio led by Lou Levy, and also featuring the Oscar Peterson trio. Recorded in 1958, it was released thirty years later.
The album was recorded on Ella's 41st birthday, (though people thought her to be 40 at the time) and considered one of Ella's greatest live recordings, alongside her more famous concert in Berlin two years later ( Ella in Berlin ), which earned her a Grammy award. In 1993, Fitzgerald's biographer Stuart Nicholson wrote, "Perhaps more than any of her live albums, Ella in Rome is a celebration of the joy of music-making, with Ella’s voice the perfect instrument to express that joy." In "The First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald for the Record", his biography of Ella, Geoffrey Mark Fidelman said that Fitzgerald "was in magnificent voice" and declared that "the entire collection made for the most satisfying of albums." [1] The New York Times declared it "an album that stands beside her songbook collections as a treasure for the ages." [2]
This album's notoriety derives partly from the fact that it was discovered in the vaults of the Verve label in 1988, and released on CD that year; before this, no one had known that this recording had existed.
Pianist Levy attested to that fact, saying, "I didn’t even know they recorded Ella in Rome, I really didn’t. When they put it out and I got a copy of the record, I thought, ‘God! we were swinging our cans off.’ It was just great! So much spirit and drive on it. You could never get it if you went into a studio.” [1] Upon its release in 1988, the album went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard jazz charts.
Ella is at the peak of her vocal talents in the 1958 recording, and a rare event can be witnessed on the last track, "Stompin' at the Savoy", in which Ella invites one of her accompanists to solo. Her inclusion of the WC Handy classic "St. Louis Blues", complete with "sublimely ferocious" scat singing, [2] is in reference to the film of the same name that she had appeared in that year. Of another song on the album, Nicholson wrote, "It is tempting to put the Rome version of "I Loves You Porgy" among the very best Ella Fitzgerald on record," citing it as evidence that Fitzgerald could, indeed, emotionally "internalize" a song. [1]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [3] |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  [4] |
| The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings | [5] |
Writing for Allmusic, music critic Scott Yanow wrote of the album "A top singer for 23 years at that point, she was at the peak of her powers... she puts on her usual show of the period, uplifting the ballads and swinging the faster material." [3]
For the 1988 Verve CD album; Verve-PolyGram 835 454-2 (Tracks 12, 13, 15 and 16 were not included on the 12" vinyl album issue)
Recorded April 25, 1958, Rome, Italy
Except on Track 18:
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
At the Opera House is a 1958 live album by Ella Fitzgerald. The album presents a recording of the 1957 Jazz at the Philharmonic Concerts. This series of live jazz concerts was devised by Fitzgerald's manager Norman Granz; they ran from 1944 to 1983. Featured on this occasion, in 1957, are Fitzgerald and the leading jazz players of the day in an onstage jam session. The first half of the 1990 CD edition includes a performance that was recorded on September 29, 1957, at the Chicago Opera House, whilst the second half highlights the concert recorded on October 7, 1957, at the Shrine Auditorium, in Los Angeles. The original LP obviously included only the mono tracks (#10-18).
Get Happy! is a 1959 album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, recorded with various studio orchestras over a two-year period.
Ella Swings Brightly with Nelson is a 1962 studio album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by an orchestra arranged by Nelson Riddle.
Ella in Hollywood is a live 1961 album by Ella Fitzgerald, with a jazz quartet led by Lou Levy, recorded in Hollywood, Los Angeles.
Ella Returns to Berlin is a 1961 live album by Ella Fitzgerald, with a trio led by the pianist Lou Levy, and also featuring the Oscar Peterson trio.
Ella at Juan-les-Pins is a 1964 live album by Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a quartet led by Roy Eldridge on trumpet with the pianist Tommy Flanagan, Gus Johnson on drums and Bill Yancey on bass. Val Valentin was the recording engineer, cover photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir. The original 1964 album featured 12 songs, highlights of two concerts Fitzgerald performed on the 28 and 29 of July 1964 at the fifth annual Festival Mondial du Jazz Antibes in Juan-les-Pins, France. In 2002 Verve re-issued this album, including all the performances from both evenings. Ella is in fine voice, sounding very aggressive at times, as her voice leaps and growls. The listener also gets to hear Ella improvise a musical tribute to the crickets who are also in fine voice throughout the performance.
Ella in London is a 1974 live album by Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a quartet led by the pianist Tommy Flanagan.
Take Love Easy is an album by the jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald with guitarist Joe Pass, released in 1974.
Ella à Nice is a 1982 album recorded live in 1971 by American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a jazz trio led by the pianist Tommy Flanagan. This recording remained unreleased until the early 1980s.
Fitzgerald and Pass...Again is a 1976 studio album by Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by jazz guitarist Joe Pass, the second of four duet albums they recorded together after Take Love Easy (1973).
Between 1935 and 1955, American singer Ella Fitzgerald was signed to Decca Records. Her early recordings as a featured vocalist were frequently uncredited. Her first credited single was 78 RPM recording "I'll Chase the Blues Away" with the Chick Webb Orchestra. Fitzgerald continued recording with Webb until his death in 1939, after which the group was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra. With the introduction of 10" and 12" Long-Playing records in the late 1940s, Decca released several original albums of Fitzgerald's music and reissued many of her previous single-only releases. From 1935 to the late 1940s Decca issued Ella Fitzgerald's recordings on 78rpm singles and album collections, in book form, of four singles that included eight tracks. These recordings have been re-issued on a series of 15 compact disc by the French record label Classics Records between 1992 and 2008.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book is a 1956 studio double album by American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a studio orchestra conducted and arranged by Buddy Bregman, focusing on the songs of Cole Porter.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book is a box set by American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald that contains songs by George and Ira Gershwin with arrangements by Nelson Riddle. It was produced by Norman Granz, Fitzgerald's manager and the founder of Verve Records. Fifty-nine songs were recorded in the span of eight months in 1959. It is one of the eight album releases comprising what is possibly Fitzgerald's greatest musical legacy: Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Complete American Songbook, in which she recorded, with top arrangers and musicians, a comprehensive collection of both well-known and obscure songs from the Great American Songbook canon, written by the likes of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer.
Ella and Louis is a studio album by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, accompanied by the Oscar Peterson Quartet, released in October 1956. Having previously collaborated in the late 1940s for the Decca label, this was the first of three albums that Fitzgerald and Armstrong were to record together for Verve Records, later followed by 1957's Ella and Louis Again and 1959's Porgy and Bess.
The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong on Verve is a compilation album released on Verve Records in 1997. It comprises three compact discs containing the three studio albums made for the label by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, released during 1956 through 1958.
Ella Fitzgerald Live at Mister Kelly's is a live album of a 1958 Ella Fitzgerald performance at Mister Kelly's, and released in 2007.
Jazz at the Philharmonic – Yoyogi National Stadium, Tokyo 1983: Return to Happiness is a live album that was released in 1983. The album includes Louie Bellson, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Grey, J. J. Johnson, Joe Pass, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Oscar Peterson, Zoot Sims, and Clark Terry.
Twelve Nights in Hollywood is a 2009 live album by the American jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, recorded at the Crescendo Club in Hollywood, Los Angeles over ten nights in May 1961, and a subsequent pair of performances in June 1962.
The collaborations between Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong have attracted much attention over the years. The artists were both widely known icons not just in the areas of big band, jazz, and swing music but across 20th century popular music in general. The two African-American musicians produced three official releases together in Ella and Louis (1956), Ella and Louis Again (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1959). Each release earned both commercial and critical success. As well, tracks related to those albums have also appeared in various forms in multi-artist collections and other such records.
