Ella Fitzgerald - Sings The George And Ira Gershwin Song Book flac album

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book is a box set by American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald that contains songs by George and Ira Gershwin with arrangements by Nelson Riddle. Fifty-nine songs were recorded in the span of eight months in 1959. Fitzgerald's recording of "But Not for Me" won the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Female. Ira Gershwin said, "I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them".

During the late '50s, Ella Fitzgerald continued her Song Book records with Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, releasing a series of albums featuring 59 songs written by George and Ira Gershwin. Those songs, plus alternate takes, were combined on a four-disc box set, Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, in 1998. These performances are easily among Fitzgerald's very best, and for any serious fan, this is the ideal place to acquire the recordings, since the sound and presentation are equally classy and impressive.

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". lt;/p

The resultant album, Ella Sings Gershwin is lovely and while they are very different in presentation to Ella’s later foray into the Great American Songbook they are both perfect vehicles for her. I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them. Such was the extent of the Gershwin’s song book that recording did not finish until 18 July 1959. It was while Ella was recording the Gershwin Songbook that Norman Granz moved to Lugano in Switzerland. He was increasingly involved with concert promotion and managing the careers of Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson and Ella, and in late 1960 he sold Verve Records to MGM. Prior to this Granz took the JATP tour to Europe in February and at the Deutschland Halle in Berlin Ella was recorded for what became Mack The Knife – Ella In Berlin.