The Very Best of the Song Books (2006)

About this title: Considered near the pinnacle of vocal jazz (along with Frank Sinatra's string of Capitol LPs), Ella Fitzgerald's eight Verve songbooks codified the canon of American Popular Song (uppercased) and continued to prove the best venue for learning what that phrase meant even 50 years after its genesis. (It's no wonder that the series even caused no less a figure than Ira Gershwin to amend the Constitution, so to speak, and suggest for Fitzgerald alone a few changes in the lyrics of his classics.) Despite their high pedigree, however, the songbooks are difficult to approach. Few of them shine much ... read more

Tracks:

1. Night and Day [Porter]
2. I Get a Kick out of You [Porter]
3. Begin the Beguine [Porter]
4. Love for Sale [Porter]
5. My Funny Valentine [Rodgers/Hart]
6. The Lady Is a Tramp [Hart/Rodgers]
7. Where or When [Hart/Rodgers]
8. Take the 'A' Train [Strayhorn]
9. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) [Ellington/Webster]
10. It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) [Ellington/Mills]
11. Cheek to Cheek [Berlin]
12. Blue Skies [Berlin]
13. 'S Wonderful [Gershwin/Gershwin]
14. Embraceable You [Gershwin/Gershwin]
15. I Got Rhythm [Gershwin/Gershwin]
16. The Man I Love [Gershwin/Gershwin]
17. Blues in the Night [Arlen/Mercer]
18. Over the Rainbow [Arlen/Harburg]
19. That Old Black Magic [Arlen/Mercer]
20. All the Things You Are [Kern/Hammerstein]
21. Skylark [Carmichael/Mercer]
22. Too Marvelous for Words [Whiting/Mercer]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.