Hello, Dolly!

“Ella Fitzgerald,” says Frank DeVol, “is as great a vocalist as it’s possible to find. She has a perfect voice mechanism, perfect intonation, perfect taste. As if that weren’t enough, she’s one of the most cooperative and agreeable artists to work with; she reads music well, and her ear is so sensitive that she can pick out a wrong note in the orchestra before I’ve spotted it myself.”

The impression that emerges from a first hearing of these twelve performances reinforces one’s previous convictions: the art of singing as it is practiced by Ella Fitzgerald is not merely an art of interpretation but also one of renovation and, in many cases, sublimation.

Of the twelve songs, only the first three were current hits at the time of recording. Hello, Dolly! is of course the title number of Carol Channing’s hit Broadway musical, which won ten “Tonys,” including one to Jerry Herman for best score. Can’t Buy Me Love at this writing has won no Tonys, Emmys, Oscars or Grammies — nothing, in fact, except a load of loot for two of the Beatles who wrote this number. In Ella’s version, for which she escalates the keys as she did for her stimulating Mack the Knife, we are reminded that this is nothing more or less than the traditional twelve-bar blues, and therefore perfectly susceptible to a Fitzgerald treatment.

There is an interesting parallel between People and My Man. The first, as anyone who can spell Barbra (Streisand that is) should know, issues from a Broadway hit show about Fanny Brice; the second, older by no less than 44 years, is a French ballad popularized in this country by Fanny Brice. It was recorded earlier by Ella in 1941 with the band she had inherited from Chick Webb; but like several other songs that Ella has sung before, it gains immeasurably in the new treatment. The improvement is due partly to Ella’s vastly increased vocal scope and sensitivity, partly to the recording quality, and partly to the sympathetic settings provided by DeVol.

Richard Rodgers’ rhythm ballad The Sweetest Sounds, from No Strings, is too recent to be called a standard, though Ella’s gentle touch should help to achieve that status very soon. Miss Otis Regrets was heard previously in Ella’s Cole Porter Song Book (V/V6 4001-2) but the new version, with an orchestral setting replacing piano accompaniment, brings out more fully every nuance of this 30-year-old fragment of lyrical irony.

Listeners expecting an outburst of boppish bacchanalia on How High The Moon will be surprised — but agreeably. At last the song, written 25 years ago for a long-forgotten Broadway musical, comes full circle and is treated as the soft, slow ballad it was originally — including the almost totally neglected verse. This is something that Ella, tired of the long years of scatting, had long wanted to record. Zoot Sims’ tenor saxophone, here and elsewhere on this side, adds a discreet yet very personal note. Ella’s laudable propensity for retaining verses is observable again in Volare, a pop hit that came here from Italy in 1958. Hank Jones, the versatile pianist who toured as Ella’s accompanist for five years, is reunited with her on this track.

The next three tunes are all legacies of the Depression years, a period that produced a durable harvest of sad songs. The Latin touch lends a contemporary aspect to The Thrill Is Gone. It is characteristic of Ella that the opening phrases in Memories of You, which most singers find they are obliged to fake by skipping either the first low note or the last high note, presents no problem to her at all. Andy Razaf’s lyrics and Eubie Blake’s melody were never more felicitously wedded than in this sweet and gracious version.

Pete Kelly’s Blues, a blues in subject matter rather than in structure, was the title song written by Sammy Cahn and Ray Heindorf for a 1955 movie in which Ella had an acting and singing role. Sims’ obbligato and solo dovetail elegantly into Ella’s reading of the minor-mode lament.

One of the customary clichés used by reviewers in assessing any Fitzgerald performance is: “What can you say about Ella? Just that she’s the greatest.” This oversimplification neglects the miraculous fact that there always is something new to say. Perhaps it will concern her adjustment of a seemingly unsuitable new tune to her own devices, or possibly, her ability to restore new and vivid color to a faded piece of material through a resourcefully fresh approach.

What can’t you say about Ella? Here we are on more fertile ground. I for one can’t say that I have ever found a singer, male or female, who is not her admirer; or that she has ever made a perfunctory record; or that she has ever failed to make a mediocre song sound good and a good song superb. For someone who was active on the scene several years before a single Beatle was born, this is a chronicle to be envied, and one not likely to be duplicated in our time.

On Side One, Hello, Dolly! was arranged by Henri Rene; People, Can’t Buy Me Love and The Sweetest Sounds were arranged by Johnnie Spence, who conducted all four of these tracks. The rest of Side One and all of Side Two were arranged and conducted by Frank DeVol.

– — LEONARD FEATHER

Track Listing

Side 1

1. Hello, Dolly! (2:15)
2. People (3:43)
3. Can’t Buy Me Love (2:36)
4. The Sweetest Sounds (2:06)
5. Miss Otis Regrets (3:56)
6. My Man (3:56)

Side 2

1. How High The Moon (3:57)
2. Volare (2:38)
3. The Thrill Is Gone (3:19)
4. Memories Of You (2:43)
5. Lullaby Of The Leaves (2:55)
6. Pete Kelly’s Blues (3:56)

Album Information

• Artist: Ella Fitzgerald
• Catalog Number: V-4064; V/V6 4064
• Catalog Numbers: V-4064; V/V6 4064
• Label: Verve
• Liner Notes: — LEONARD FEATHER
• Source: V-4064
• Distributor: MGM
• Recording Location: Recorded in London (Johnnie Spence tracks)
• Sticker Note: This album contains Ella’s smash hit CAN’T BUY ME LOVE and other great Ella hits
• Price Sticker: 23 $30 RIAA Note:

This record has been engineered and manufactured in accordance with standards developed by the Record Industry Association of America, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the betterment of recorded music and literature.