Fifty-four years ago Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong sat in a recording studio in Hollywood with Ray Brown (double bass) Herb Ellis (guitar) Oscar Peterson (piano) and Louie Bellson (drums) and together recorded two dozen of the finest pieces of music ever laid to vinyl, including Autumn in New York, Stompin at the Savoy, They All Laughed and Love is Here to Stay.
Louis was 56 and Ella just 39.
Frighteningly, I have been listening to those two albums for over thirty years, so when I first heard the recordings they weren't really very old. The equivalent to my children listening now to music from 1987.
But not really, for Ella & Louis have no equivalent: she of the purest voice and he of the purest trumpet, individually they were stunning and together for those four golden days in 1956 and 1957 they were untouchable, unmatchable, ineffable.
Louis died in 1971 and Ella, poor diabetic Ella, died in 1996.
The tracks they recorded in 1956 and 1957 were a constant sound track to my childhood, and ever since.
1 comment:
The double album cost £1. 15s. and I still have them. How much are they worth now?
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