1961, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook. Notable also because it includes the seldom-heard opening stanza. This recording is an excellent example of an Ella song that could've been a whole lot better than the product we got, and a rare example of Ella being against the material she performed.
Ella wanted NO part of this song. None whatsoever, fought like hell to get it dropped from the work list. Her longtime producer and trusted confidant and manager, Norman Granz, the man who made her America's Greatest Singer, insisted it appear, saying the public would expect it and the song was good for her voice.
I agree on both counts, but Ella felt the song was so strongly associated with Judy Garland's iconic original that there was nothing new or special she could add to it. (There's a very good reason she never recorded "Fever," after all.) She felt pressure she didn't feel with other songs - Ella Fitzgerald, feeling intimidated by another singer! - and believed she had no business touching Judy's song. You have to work to find it, but somewhere out there, the first take of this track exists, and her displeasure is audibly clear in the delivery.
A second take was requested by Granz, and it's pleasant enough. But it could've been so much more. I hadn't heard this track in more than 15 years, and listening to it again tonight, I realized the problem. When Ella didn't want to sing the song, a big part of the problem may have been how much the arrangement evokes the original. The strings, in particular, make you picture Dorothy swooning against the haystack.
The moments where arranger Billy May's woozy, lilting saxes come in and Ella bends a note just a little bit, you realize this could've been something great if Granz had had Mays remove the strings, build it around the horns, and recast it as a saloon-style blues. Ella didn't want to sing it because she saw no way to make it her own, and from the very beginning, the arrangement does her no favors in divorcing the song from the film version.
And, weirder still, May was one of the greatest arrangers of the era but this arrangement can't seem to decide what it wants to be, teeter-tottering back and forth from operetta to pop-jazz. (Dig the tenor solo by Plas Johnson, one of the era's most versatile and in-demand session cats, who in just two years would be known all over the world for his gloriously purring work on Mancini's score for The Pink Panther.)
It's a pleasant recording, as I said. But it's not a standout in her catalog. I thought it'd be good to show that sometimes Ella's production team and/or the limits of her imagination or (yes, even) skill left things wanting, because even the greatest aren't perfect.
-A
Ella 101 is a daily look at 101 essential recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, who was born 101 years ago this month. Tune in to Equinox, Monday nights from 8 - 11 p.m. on WYSO, to hear Ella and more great jazz with host Duante Beddingfield.
