The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong on Verve

Product Description:

Full performer name: Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong.

Personnel includes: Louis Armstrong (vocals, trumpet); Ella Fitzgerald (vocals); Russell Garcia (conductor); Ed Hall (clarinet); Trummy Young (trombone); Oscar Peterson, Billy Kyle (piano); Herb Ellis (guitar); Ray Brown, Dale Jones (bass); Buddy Rich, Louie Bellson, Barrett Deems (drums); The Russell Garcia Orchestra.

Recorded between August 1956 and October 1957. Includes liner notes by William Ruhlmann.

THE COMPLETE ELLA FITZGERALD & LOUIS ARMSTRONG ON VERVE was nominated for a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package - Boxed.

This compact, stylishly packaged, three-disc box set delivers exactly what the title promises: every one of the 47 master tracks (including a few unreleased tracks) recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong for Verve between August 1956 and October 1957. The jazz standards and pop songs on disc one and two are what gained the most attention at the time, and justifiably so--Fitzgerald and Armstrong are possibly the two greatest scat singers in jazz history, and under Norman Granz's magnificent tutelage, both perform at the best of their abilities.

But it's the material on disc three that's possibly the most satisfying. Fitzgerald and Armstrong perform the complete song score to George and Ira Gershwin's PORGY AND BESS, and it may well be the definitive vocal interpretation, as individual yet true to the intent of the composers as Miles Davis's and Gil Evans' more renowned instrumental version. Fitzgerald and Armstrong's take on the score is an overlooked masterpiece.