Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
| Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Ella Fitzgerald | ||||
| Released | 1959 | |||
| Recorded | January, March and July 1959 | |||
| Genre | Vocal jazz | |||
| Length | 3:16:48 | |||
| Label | Verve | |||
| Producer | Norman Granz | |||
| Ella Fitzgerald chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide |  |
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book is a 1959 (see 1959 in music) five album set by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, focusing on the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. It was recorded with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, marking the first time that Fitzgerald and Riddle had worked together.
The album cover is an original portrait of Fitzgerald by the French artist Bernard Buffet, starting a tradition of using contemporary artists for Fitzgerald's albums, the artwork of Henri Matisse gracing the cover of her Harold Arlen Songbook (1961).
Riddle arranged fifty-seven Gershwin compositions for the album, including the two orchestral suites which open the album. Though Fitzgerald was twenty-years-old at the time George Gershwin died in 1937, Ira Gershwin was still alive to see this project completed, and helped contribute lyrics and support to some songs on the album which had never been recorded before. It was this project that led Ira Gershwin to say that he had "never known how good our songs were until I heard Ella sing them".
Ella Fitzgerald was forty-one when she recorded this album, and at the peak of her vocal powers, demonstrated in the earlier Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book, and her two greatest live albums from this period, Ella in Berlin (1960) and Ella in Rome (1958). Like the other songbooks devoted to the Broadway composers, Fitzgerald gets only a single outlet for her notable scat singing, on "I Got Rhythm".
Fitzgerald's recording of "But Not for Me" won her the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Female.
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