Latest / Timeless Songs with Eileen Ponich / Ella Fitzgerald

Transcript

Ella Fitzgerald · Timeless Songs with Eileen Ponich

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: At 17, Ella Fitzgerald stepped onto the stage of the Apollo Theater, planning to dance.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: At the last moment, she decided to sing instead.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: That change of plans helped launch a career and a voice that would change
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: the way generations heard the great American songbook.
• 0:25
  Music
• 0:26
  [music]
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Timeless Songs, where great songs live on.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen Ponich.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some songs become classics the moment they're written,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: but many of the songs we now think of as timeless needed something more.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: They needed someone to sing them in a way that helped us hear what was there all along.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: The tenderness in a lyric,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: the playfulness of a rhythm,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling that makes a song suddenly seem to be about our own lives.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: A melody on a page is a beginning.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: A singer gives it breath.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And few singers did that more beautifully than Ella Fitzgerald.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm learning a song from the Great American Songbook,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ella's recordings are often among the first I turn to.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I listen for how she shapes a phrase,
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  SPEAKER_00: how clearly she tells the story,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: and how she makes something that takes extraordinary skill sound so natural.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to explore how Ella did more than interpret these songs.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She helped keep them alive.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Her story began far from the elegant orchestras and recording studios we associate
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: with her soundbook albums.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ella was born in Newport News,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Virginia, in 1917, and her early years brought hardship and instability.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then, in 1934, at 17,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: she stepped onto the stage of the Apollo Theater in Harlem,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: For Amateur Night, she had planned to dance.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: What changed her mind?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The dances she performed before her were so good that she doubted she could compete.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine being seventeen, standing on that stage, and suddenly having to trust a different gift.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: She sang and won.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Soon afterward, Ella joined the orchestra, led by drummer Chick Webb.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Her 1938 recording of A Tisket,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: A Tasket turned a nursery rhyme into a playful hit,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: and you can already hear so much of what we love about her,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: the swing, the clarity, the sheer pleasure she takes in making music.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: When Webb died in 1939,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ella took over the band,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: still in her early 20s,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: but the recordings that would become the heart of her legacy were still ahead.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1950s, her manager and producer, Norman Granz, saw an opportunity.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: What if they devoted entire albums to individual songwriters?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Beginning in 1956,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: On Granz's Verve label, Ella recorded her celebrated songbook series.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It began with Cole Porter and over the years honored Rodgers and Hart,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Duke Ellington,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what that meant.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Songs from different shows, films, and decades could now be heard together.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Listeners could discover the wit of a lyricist or the range of feeling
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: within one songwriter's work, and guiding them through it all was Ella's voice.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: For some listeners, these albums were an introduction.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: For others, they made a familiar song feel new.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And for singers like me, they remain a place to return to and to learn.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So what makes Ella's singing so special?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it begins with the words.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Her diction is clear, but it never sounds like work.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: The lyric feels almost conversational,
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: and you can follow the thought from one phrase to the next.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know how much attention the takes, breath, pitch, rhythm, the shape of the melody.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yet the listener just needs to hear a story.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ella makes all of it work together.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's her sense of time.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: She can let a phrase linger or give it a little lift without losing the pulse of the music.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when she scat sings,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: improvising with syllables instead of words,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: you hear another side of her imagination.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: The voice becomes an instrument.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to one of her performances of How High the Moon.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: She plays with rhythm, slips in pieces of other melodies, and creates lines as agile as a horn.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's dazzling technique there.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But what reaches me is the sense of play.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then you turn to a ballad and hear something quieter.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ella often gives the melody and the lyric room to carry the feeling,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: without pressing every phrase into a dramatic statement.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I admire that.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: When a song matters deeply to us,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's tempting to emphasize every word,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: to make sure the listener knows how much we feel.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Ella reminds me how powerful it can be to trust the song,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: to let a phrase breathe, to allow the feeling to arrive.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: For me, listening to Ella is a masterclass in musical storytelling.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: A singer's work is a series of choices.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where to breathe, when to move forward, how much to hold back.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those choices can change the way we hear a song.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Long after a Broadway show closes,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: or a film leaves the theater, a song can find another life in someone's voice.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Ella gave that life to so many songs,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: and every time someone discovers one of her recordings, The journey continues.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of why I love the Great American Songbook.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: These songs connect us to the people who created them,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: to the artists who carried them forward, and to something in our own lives.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ella's voice still invites us into that connection.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for spending this time with me on Timeless Songs.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to spend more time with Ella's music,
• 8:15
  visit the written companion post
• 8:18
  https://timelesssongs.substack.com/p/ella-fitzgerald?r=74mwg0&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThere,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then send it to someone who might love it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how these songs keep moving, one listener at a time.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Wishing you a song that feels effortless to sing, And a moment where the music carries you.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen Ponich with a song in my heart.
• 9:17
  [music]