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cimoreneMy love affair with the great ladies of jazz started when I was around 13 or so and my dad gave my mom the album, a 1995 Rebound Records compilation featuring Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, and Shirley Horn.
Because I liked it so much, in my teenage years my dad, who had a habit of checking the used record store several times a week for his own interests, gave me a series of other albums featuring the same vocalists (and showing incredible gift acumen, I may say). I got several greatest hits collections each of Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington in this period, as well as one by the rarer Big Mama Thornton, who wasn't featured in the Great Ladies collection or its sequel, Great Ladies Sing the Blues; but she's iconic in her own right for her Hound Dog recording, barely recognizable in Elvis's frankly baffling and greatly inferior cover. (Of course, when you listen to the real "Hound Dog", it's immediately obvious that a male cover is either gay or nonsensical, and omitting most of the lyrics didn't fix that problem for Elvis.)
Over some years I intermittently sought more albums by the same vocalists, and I also have Morgana King, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan collections.
It doesn't take long to begin hearing the same songs when you're collecting jazz, but but coming at it from the songwriter's angle didn't really occur to me until I got Ella's iconic Cole Porter Songbook fifteen years ago or so. After having listened to so many greatest hits collection from the various great ladies over the years, it's pretty rare that I encounter a song by one of them that I love that I haven't heard before.
And when I look it up, it's usually by a familiar name (or pair of names). (There were two on the last album I got, Dinah Washington's "For Those in Love": "This Can't Be Love" and "I Could Write a Book", which both turned out to be Rodgers and Hart.)
I've only recently learned that Ella actually recorded an entire American Songbook collection of eight albums in the 1950s-60s for Verve, including, according to Wikipedia,
, plus in 1981 an additional "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Antonio Carlos Jobim Song Book". I'm not sure if all my favorites will be in this collection, which I'm not sure I can easily obtain, but it's a sure bet all my favorites do fall in what could more broadly be termed the Great American Songbook.
The question that makes me curious, then, is what it is about this era of music writing and the type of jazz that I like (because I love the jazz in the vocal recordings of the great ladies, but most of the more modern stuff - and some of it not very much more modern - doesn't interest me beyond a mildly positive reaction) that makes me like it. Great Ladies of Jazz is still the desert island recording that I would listen to the most happily and the longest, if confined to one single album.
Because I liked it so much, in my teenage years my dad, who had a habit of checking the used record store several times a week for his own interests, gave me a series of other albums featuring the same vocalists (and showing incredible gift acumen, I may say). I got several greatest hits collections each of Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington in this period, as well as one by the rarer Big Mama Thornton, who wasn't featured in the Great Ladies collection or its sequel, Great Ladies Sing the Blues; but she's iconic in her own right for her Hound Dog recording, barely recognizable in Elvis's frankly baffling and greatly inferior cover. (Of course, when you listen to the real "Hound Dog", it's immediately obvious that a male cover is either gay or nonsensical, and omitting most of the lyrics didn't fix that problem for Elvis.)
Over some years I intermittently sought more albums by the same vocalists, and I also have Morgana King, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan collections.
It doesn't take long to begin hearing the same songs when you're collecting jazz, but but coming at it from the songwriter's angle didn't really occur to me until I got Ella's iconic Cole Porter Songbook fifteen years ago or so. After having listened to so many greatest hits collection from the various great ladies over the years, it's pretty rare that I encounter a song by one of them that I love that I haven't heard before.
And when I look it up, it's usually by a familiar name (or pair of names). (There were two on the last album I got, Dinah Washington's "For Those in Love": "This Can't Be Love" and "I Could Write a Book", which both turned out to be Rodgers and Hart.)
I've only recently learned that Ella actually recorded an entire American Songbook collection of eight albums in the 1950s-60s for Verve, including, according to Wikipedia,
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (1956)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Song Book (1956)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book (1957)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book (1958)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book (1959)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book (1961)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Song Book (1963)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Song Book (1964)
, plus in 1981 an additional "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Antonio Carlos Jobim Song Book". I'm not sure if all my favorites will be in this collection, which I'm not sure I can easily obtain, but it's a sure bet all my favorites do fall in what could more broadly be termed the Great American Songbook.
The question that makes me curious, then, is what it is about this era of music writing and the type of jazz that I like (because I love the jazz in the vocal recordings of the great ladies, but most of the more modern stuff - and some of it not very much more modern - doesn't interest me beyond a mildly positive reaction) that makes me like it. Great Ladies of Jazz is still the desert island recording that I would listen to the most happily and the longest, if confined to one single album.
