ELLA FITZGERALD - IMAGINATION

IMAGINATION

ELLA FITZGERALD

SONGWRITERS: JAMES VAN HEUSEN & JOHNNY BURKE

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: IMAGINATION 

LABEL: DECCA RECORDS

GENRE: JAZZ

YEAR: 1940

 

             Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

             After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career.

               Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.

            While Fitzgerald appeared in movies and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Cheek to Cheek", "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)".

               In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

          Between 1935 and 1955 Ella Fitzgerald was signed to Decca Records. Her early recordings as a featured vocalist were frequently uncredited. Her first credited single was 78 RPM recording "I'll Chase the Blues Away" with the Chick Webb Orchestra. Fitzgerald continued recording with Webb until his death in 1939, after which the group was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra. With the introduction of 10" and 12" Long-Playing records in the late 1940s, Decca released several original albums of Fitzgerald's music and reissued many of her previous single-only releases. From 1935 to the late 1940s Decca issued Ella Fitzgerald's recordings on 78rpm singles and album collections, in book form, of four singles that included eight tracks. These recordings have been re-issued on a series of 15 compact disc by the French record label Classics Records between 1992 and 2008.

        In 1956 Ella Fitzgerald signed with Verve Records, the Norman Granz record label. Fitzgerald recorded with Verve until the mid-1960s. Included in this era were a series of eight Song Book albums, with interpretations of the greater part of the Great American Songbook, with songs from the pens of Cole Porter (1956), Rodgers & Hart (1956), Duke Ellington (1957), Irving Berlin (1958), George and Ira Gershwin (1959), Harold Arlen (1961), Jerome Kern (1963) and Johnny Mercer (1964). Ella Fitzgerald released many stand alone singles throughout her Verve years. These were re-issued in 2003 on the 2-CD set, Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 1.

               The late 1960s and early 1970s saw Fitzgerald release albums on several major record labels, including three albums on Capitol Records and two on the Reprise Records label. In 1972 Norman Granz formed Pablo Records, the label continued to release Ella Fitzgerald's albums up until her last recorded album All That Jazz in 1989.

       In recent years the Ella Fitzgerald back catalogue has continued to grow, this includes complete albums of previously unreleased live material and alternative recordings from her studio sessions.

Imagination is funny, it makes a cloudy day Sunny

Makes a bee think of honey just as I think of you

 

Imagination is crazy, your whole perspective gets hazy

Starts you asking a daisy: What to do, what to do?

 

Have you ever felt a gentle touch and then a kiss

And then and then, find it's only your imagination again?

Oh, well

 

Imagination is silly, you go around willy-nilly

For example I go around wanting you

And yet I can't imagine that you want me, too.