Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Let's Face the Music and Dance
2. You're Laughing at Me
3. Let Yourself Go
4. You Can Have Him
5. Russian Lullaby
6. Puttin' on the Ritz
7. Get Thee Behind Me, Satan
8. Alexander's Ragtime Band
9. Top Hat, White Tie and Tails
10. How About Me?
11. Cheek to Cheek
12. I Used to Be Color Blind
13. Lazy
14. How Deep Is the Ocean?
15. All by Myself
16. Remember

Disc 2:

1. Supper Time
2. How's Chances?
3. Heat Wave
4. Isn't This a Lovely Day?
5. You Keep Coming Back Like A Song
6. Reaching for the Moon
7. Slumming on Park Avenue
8. Song Is Ended
9. I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket
10. Now It Can Be Told
11. Always
12. It's a Lovely Day Today
13. Change Partners
14. No Strings (I'm Fancy Free)
15. I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm
16. Blue Skies [*]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31069 in Music
• Released on: 2000-11-14
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .33 pounds

Album Description
2009 two CD set including bonus tracks. Ella Fitzgerald's Songbook series of albums are rightly famed as being some of the greatest vocal Jazz ever and The Irving Berlin Songbook is one of the best. Featured in its entirety along with bonus tracks, this edition contains 38 glorious tracks. Jazz Manifesto.

Customer Reviews

How Can You Miss With Ella And Berlin
This handsomely repackaged collection of 32 masterfully crafted songs by American composer Irving Belin stands as part of the greatest body of work produced by any 20th century popular singer. In compiling her monumental songbook collection Fitzgerald paid tribute to America's "big five", Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Richard Rogers, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. She also recorded the works of Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer and Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, superb but arguably second tier composers.

Of the "big five", Berlin is admittedly the most sentimental and perhaps least urbane. Where Richard Rogers could tell of ladies playing craps, (The Lady Is A Tramp) and Cole Porter could write of sniffing cocaine, (I Get A Kick Out Of You) and illicit love, (Love For Sale) Berlin was content to praise the joys of Easter Bonnets, White Christmas and Alexander's Ragtime Band. But let's not forget his more than capable hand at romance with the likes of Cheek To Cheek, Blue Skies and I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm.

As with all of Ella's songbooks, the arrangements, the selections and of course her superlative styling make this essential listening. I do have a preference for the Cole Porter and Rogers & Hart songbooks, but this collection still rates five stars. How could you miss with Ella and Berlin?

Defining American Music
Irving Berlin's music, performed as originally written, does not sound at all like it would "fit" Ella's style.

But it does.

In fact, Ella's interpretation of these classics just about defines uniquely American music. I was so taken with my "personal discovery" of these classics, and this collection finds and displays only the very, very best.

You'll love it, and wonder how you could claim to understand American music before you've given it a thorough hearing.

Bluest of Skies
Ella is superlative. We know that. Berlin's tunes neither have the wry urban sophistication of Porter nor the jazzy complexity of Ellington, but they have a compelling simplicity and honesty. Ella's versions are the best out there. In fact, "Blue Skies" is in my mind one of the top five Ella songs, and that says a great deal indeed. There are many standouts here, including "Putting on the Ritz", which is a great party song. Enjoy!