Ella Fitzgerald & Billie Holiday At Newport (Remastered) Ella Fitzgerald & Billie Holiday

• 1This Can't Be Love (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)01:44
• 2I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)04:27
• 3Body And Soul (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)04:22
• 4April In Paris (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)04:02
• 5I've Got A Crush On You (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)02:27
• 6Airmail Special (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival, 1957)04:34
• 7I Can't Give You Anything But Love (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)05:08
• 8Nice Work If You Can Get It (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)02:39
• 9Willow Weep For Me (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)03:11
• 10My Man (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)03:32
• 11Lover, Come Back To Me (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)02:07
• 12Lady Sings The Blues (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival, 1957)03:02
• 13What A Little Moonlight Can Do (Live At The Newport Jazz Festival/1957)03:15
• Total Runtime44:30

Info for Ella Fitzgerald & Billie Holiday At Newport (Remastered)

The legendary ladies sing Body and Soul; April in Paris; This Can't Be Love (those by Ella); My Man; Lover, Come Back to Me; Willow, Weep for Me (those by Billie); Skyliner; Perdido (those by Carmen), and more.

Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday at Newport is a 1958 live album by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, recorded at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival.

Fitzgerald's first track promoted her recent album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Songbook (1956), and after several teething problems with the microphone, and tempo problems on "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down (And Write Myself a Letter)", she delivers a stunning scat solo on "Air Mail Special", quoting from several recent pop hits.

Tracks 1-10 (July 4, 1957)
Ella Fitzgerald, vocals
Don Abney, piano
Wendell Marshall, double bass
Jo Jones, drums

Tracks 11-16 (July 6, 1957)
Billie Holiday, vocals
Mal Waldron, piano
Joe Benjamin, double bass
Jo Jones, drums

Tracks 17-24 (July 5, 1957)
Carmen McRae, vocals, piano
Ray Bryant, piano
Junior Mance, piano
Ike Issacs, double bass
Jimmy Cobb, drums
Specs Wright, drums

Recorded July 4–6, 1957 at Newport Jazz Festival, Freebody Park, Newport
Produced by Norman Granz

Digitally remastered

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)
was, along with Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, one of the most important vocalists to emerge from the big-band era. Her style is marked by a sunny outlook, a girlish innocence, and a virtuoso command of her voice.

Fitzgerald was born out of wedlock in Newport News, Virginia, to a laundress mother and a father who disappeared when she was three years old. Along with her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend who functioned as a stepfather, she soon moved to Yonkers, New York, where she began her schooling. Around the third grade she started dancing, a pursuit that became almost an obsession. In 1932, when she was fifteen, her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. Her stepfather treated her badly, but an aunt took the teenager to live with her in Harlem. This arrangement did not last long; Fitzgerald ran away in 1934 to live on the streets. Late that year she won a talent contest at the Apollo Theater; she had entered as a dancer, but nervousness caused her to sing instead. Several months later she joined drummer Chick Webb’s big band, where she mostly sang novelties like 'Vote for Mr. Rhythm'. In 1938 she recorded 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket', her own adaptation of a turn-of-the-century nursery rhyme, which took the country by storm and eventually sold a million copies. When Webb died in 1939 the band’s management installed Fitzgerald as leader.

In 1942 the band broke up and Fitzgerald became a single act, touring with various other popular names of the day. She also became interested in scat singing and the newly emerging style known as bebop, and in 1945 she recorded a landmark version of 'Flying Home.' Several tours with the Dizzy Gillespie band also contributed to her assimilation of the bebop style.

In the late 1940s Fitzgerald began to tour with the Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe, working with such leading musicians as saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, pianist Oscar Peterson, and bassist Ray Brown, to whom she was married for four years. JATP impresario Norman Granz became increasingly influential in her career, and in 1953 he became her manager.

Three years after that he became her record producer as well, recording her on his own Verve label. He wasted little time in having Fitzgerald record a double album of Cole Porter songs. Fitzgerald made many wonderful albums for Verve in the following decade, but the six songbooks occupy a special place in her discography. They were instrumental in expanding Fitzgerald’s appeal beyond that of a 'jazz singer' and creating a demand for her in venues not usually open to jazz artists.

For die-hard jazz fans, though, the well-polished jewels of the songbook series lack the raw energy of Fitzgerald’s live performances. Happily, Granz released several landmark concert albums by her as well. Especially exciting was a 1960 Berlin concert, which featured an electrifying performance of an impromptu take on 'Mack the Knife,' which became a Top 30 single. Fitzgerald usually performed with a trio or quartet, but there were also appearances with larger groups, such as the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras. By the 1960s Fitzgerald had become wealthy enough to retire, but the love of performing drove her on — she appeared regularly until just a couple of years before her death in 1996. Sidemen came and went, but except when health problems intervened she performed as much as humanly possible, sometimes singing concerts in two different cities in one day. Source: Verve Music (Phil Bailey). Excerpted from Ken Burns’ Jazz: The Definitive Ella Fitzgerald

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