The First Lady of Song

Gold; Ella Fitzgerald

I have put this day off for far too long. Miss Ella Fitzgerald’s face has been staring at me for weeks from the view screen of my iPod.

I am not qualified to talk about Ella Fitzgerald. On the greatest day I wouldn’t have the strength. Today I find it hard to even try.

This paragraph right here represents my third attempt to graciously, intelligently and perspicaciously exalt her place in all of music without sounding dopey and dull-witted. I’ve failed yet again.

In 1994, one of the musicians in the band that I led on the Star Odyssey bought a box of old video tapes for a dollar at a pawn shop while we were in Vancouver, BC. There were some great movies in the box that brought hours of entertainment. But the reason he bought the box was a VHS tape called “Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music III” that featured Mr. Sinatra, of course, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Ella Fitzgerald.

You don’t see Mr. Sinatra stand aside very often. That goes against his persona. But he voluntarily does so on this video. Twice; once to listen to her scat on “Stompin’ At The Savoy”, and once to “eavesdrop” as she renders “Don’t Be That Way”. Remarkable, considering that the production has Sinatra’s name splashed across the title. I like to think that he reveled in this opportunity to back out of the spotlight, as if to say, “Yes, I can carry my own with my particular way to turn a phrase. But this woman – this lady of song – my friend Ella Fitzgerald is the real thing. Please don’t talk. Let’s listen.”

I think that I can count on three hands the number of times where true energy has penetrated the camera lens and fallen out of my TV or computer screen. When I heard Mr. Sinatra and Ms. Fitzgerald sing “The Lady Is A Tramp”, I was lifted as high out of my chair today when I found the performance on YouTube as I was in front of the TV in my stateroom aboard the Star Odyssey fifteen years ago. And they recorded twenty-seven years before that. I’ve been jazzed all afternoon after listening to it once. Precious few musical moments are truly timeless. This is certainly one for the ages.

Gold, with its forty tracks, represents and embodies a great American life. I wish that I could honor her by acquiring the entire discography of her career, that I could track the making of an authentic musical icon, song by song, gem by gem, that maybe, just maybe, I could pinpoint that precise place where effort disappeared, to leave only pure music, pure energy, pure Gold. This compilation along with a few other albums will suffice in the mean time.

God gives us many reasons to live on this earth. Oreo cookies, the Grand Canyon and Ella Fitzgerald are three of the best.

Credits: To Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, for writing the excellent “The Lady Is A Tramp”, and for envisioning that a song can rise out of its place in a musical, to stand on its own, and to twinkle in the reflection of another artist.