Ella Fitzgerald - The Complete Piano Duets (2020) [2CD]

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Many of the most beautiful recordings in Ella Fitzgerald's catalog were her duets with pianists. The freedom afforded by this simple configuration resulted in some of her most sensitive, affecting and heartfelt work. This collection assembles every recording Ella made in the piano duo format - for the Decca, Verve and Pablo labels. It includes 1950's Ella Sings Gershwin, 1954's Songs In A Mellow Mood and 1956's Let No Man Write My Epitaph, all in one package for the first time.



The double album includes detailed liner notes by the respected author and music critic Will Friedwald, who writes: “Fitzgerald was so great at everything — especially scatting and swinging — that it tended to overshadow her ballad singing. Yet, as any one of the 43 tracks on this collection makes clear, Ella Fitzgerald was a nonpareil singer of love songs, a balladeer par excellence.



The double album includes detailed liner notes by the respected author and music critic Will Friedwald, who writes: “Fitzgerald was so great at everything — especially scatting and swinging — that it tended to overshadow her ballad singing. Yet, as any one of the 43 tracks on this collection makes clear, Ella Fitzgerald was a nonpareil singer of love songs, a balladeer par excellence.



“Like her closest colleagues, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday, Fitzgerald could get deep into not just the words but the inner meaning of a song and bring out the profound truths that the lyricist had in mind all along.”



The Complete Piano Duets sequences each track in its chronological recording order. It takes the listener to her early sessions with pianist Ellis Larkins (‘Someone To Watch Over Me,’ ‘But Not For Me’ and ‘I’ve Got a Crush On You’), then, with Paul Smith, to Cole Porter’s ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ and the gritty 1960 crime drama Let No Man Write My Epitaph (‘Black Coffee,’ ‘Angel Eyes,’ ‘I Cried For You’).



The peerless vocalist teams with Tommy Flanagan at a 1964 French gig for ‘Somewhere In The Night’ and we hear 1975 duets with Oscar Peterson from the “third act” of her career (‘Mean to Me,’ ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?,’ ‘April In Paris’).



Fitzgerald first worked with Larkins for her 1950 album, Ella Sings Gershwin, which did so well that they reunited for another voice-and-piano album, Songs In A Mellow Mood, in 1954, featuring a selection of Great American Songbook standards. The singer would occasionally return to the intimate format , including piano duets on 1956’s Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book and 1957’s Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Song Book.



The 1960 LP Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs From Let No Man Write My Epitaph included songs from the film in which she appeared in as a pianist-singer, and became her third full album with only piano accompaniment, this time played by Paul Smith. The rendition of ‘Somewhere In The Night’ with Flanagan was recoerded live on the French Riviera and later issued on the 1964 live set Ella at Juan-Les-Pins. Fitzgerald’s final major combination with a piano player was Ella and Oscar, a 1975 release with her longtime collaborator Oscar Peterson.



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Tracklist:

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CD 1

01. Looking For A Boy

02. My One And Only

03. How Long Has This Been Going On?

04. I've Got A Crush On You

05. But Not For Me

06. Soon

07. Someone To Watch Over Me

08. Maybe

09. I'm Glad There Is You

10. Baby, What Else Can I Do

11. What Is There To Say?

12. Makin' Whoopee!

13. Until The Real Thing Comes Along

14. People Will Say We're In Love

15. Please Be Kind

16. Imagination

17. My Heart Belongs To Daddy

18. You Leave Me Breathless

19. Nice Work If You Can Get It

20. Stardust

21. Miss Otis Regrets

22. Lush Life



CD 2

01. My Melancholy Baby

02. Angel Eyes

03. Black Coffee

04. I Hadn't Anyone Till You

05. I Cried For You

06. Misty

07. Who's Sorry Now?

08. I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby

09. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

10. Then You've Never Been Blue

11. September Song

12. Reach For Tomorrow

13. One For My Baby

14. Somewhere In The Night

15. Mean To Me

16. How Long Has This Been Going On?

17. When Your Lover Has Gone

18. More Than You Know

19. There's A Lull In My Life

20. How Long Has This Been Going On? (Take 5 Alternate)

21. More Than You Know (Take 1 Alternate)



*2020 Set, Verve B0031519-02