Porgy & Bess

About

Producer Norman Granz recorded these singular American talents for Verve in 1956 (<i>Ella & Louis</i>) and 1957 (<i>Ella & Louis Again</i>) before he landed this absolute stunner of a double album. Recorded just months after <i>Ella & Louis Again</i>, <i>Porgy & Bess</i> also preceded Fitzgerald’s <i>Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook</i> of 1959 (with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle). It’s a vital addition to Fitzgerald’s Verve songbook recording, offering an extended look at a particular slice of Gershwin, one that has proven attractive to a great many jazz artist. (Miles Davis and Gil Evans released their own, radically different <i>Porgy and Bess</i> in March 1959.) Ella and Pops convey a deep emotional connection to the story of what Gershwin called his “folk opera,” with Russell Garcia’s evocative and swinging large-ensemble arrangements framing their utterly dissimilar yet highly complementary voice. The reception history of Gershwin’s ambitious venture (which premiered in 1935, two years before the composer’s death at 38) is extremely complex, as it must be when a celebrated white composer attempts a tableau of African American life in the distinctly African American vernacular of blues and jazz. Black composers including Scott Joplin strove to create a distinctly American “folk opera” medium decades before Gershwin, but received little recognition. And even in the ’30, <i>Porgy and Bess</i> was criticized for furthering damaging stereotype. Armstrong, often wrongly accused of being soft on racism and civil right, had his own painful struggle against accusations of “tomming.” Hearing him in this context inevitably raises these issue. But the music itself, in its sheer rapturous beauty, transcends them. .

via Apple Music

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