Ella Fitzgerald:
Just One of Those Things
Director:
Leslie Woodhead
Year:
2019
Rating: 7.5
For me, Frank Sinatra is the best male vocalist
of the 20th century and Ella Fitzgerald is the best female vocalist. Sinatra
isn't debatable but there have been so many great female singers that I suppose
an argument could be made for - Billie Holiday could bring an emotional wallop
to her songs that Ella never could, Nina Simone felt so contemporary and
righteous while Ella generally shied away from politics, I love listening
to Peggy Lee do Big Band, Judy Garland had some amazing songs to her credit
- but Fitzgerald's singing was so pristine - every word is crystal clear
- pure music that could take a melody or a beat and sing circles around it.
Easily the greatest interpreter of songs along with Sinatra. She sang for
60 years through the Swing Era, the Be-bop years and the classical years.
And ruled them all. Her versions of most songs became the definitive version.
Who would have thought that in 1934. Her mother had died two years earlier
in Harlem, she ran away from home, got tossed into reformatory school where
they wrote that she was "ungovernable". She ran away from there as well and
lived on the streets. Then one night she planned to try out at the famous
Apollo Amateur Night. As a dancer. But before she came on two sisters did
a dance at and she was dismayed - they are better than me - so she sang in
this raggedy dress - sixteen years old. And as they say a legend was born.
One of his band members told Chick Webb that he had to listen to her and
when he saw her he was aghast at her looks. Webb had the hottest swingingest
band in Harlem - Benny Goodman challenged him one time and was crushed. He
was a dwarf with a bent spine and the drummer in the band. He had a reputation
as not the nicest guy but he heard Ella sing and hired her on the spot -
and she was the singer in the band making them huge until Webb died in 1939
at 34 years old.
There is nothing particularly dramatic in her life - no drug or alcohol problems
- no great tragedies - she just loved to sing in front of an audience and
not much else. She did it for 6 decades. Like all black artists of that period
she ran into racism everywhere but only rarely publicly addressed it. She
was unable to play the swanky clubs in Los Angeles till Marilyn Monroe went
to the club owner and told him if you hire Ella I will be here every night
and if you don't I will make sure no one is here. After that she never had
a problem. Often she would tour for 48 weeks a year and be bored the other
four weeks. She was the Queen of Swing in the 1940s and then Swing died and
Be-bop came along and she took some time off - figured it out and became
one of the great Be-bop singers ever - using her scat singing as an instrument
- improvising and going off in directions only she could but always bringing
it back where it belonged - keeping it based on the song. This documentary
plays a five minute scat performance in which she references song after song
but making it as cohesive as anything could be. As one person says, she was
a musical genius but never realized it - it was just there.
Be-bop had its time as well and she went on to perhaps the albums that immortalized
her. Norman Grantz a producer persuaded her against her better judgement
to make a number of albums each focused on one songwriter - one of the Tin
Pan Alley artists. The American Songbooks as they became known. She revitalized
these songs - gave them new life - made the songwriters relevant again. Cole
Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington,
Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer. And loads of other albums -
her collaborations with Louis Armstrong are wonderful - his scat singing
was a huge influence on her, with Basie, Oscar Peterson - but one of my favorite
albums of hers is The Intimate Ella with only her and a piano played by Paul
Smith. It is a near perfect album. Perhaps the reason I like her music so
much is that my father played these American Songbook albums all the time.
This is an excellent adulatory documentary of her life and music. It is from
BBC so it is pretty standard documentary filmmaking - clips of her singing
and talking along with a few talking heads. But for me a real pleasure.
