Ella Fitzgerald: Improvisations on "Take the 'A' Train", 2 of 2
The previous essay and this one make up a “master class” on improvisation: Five performances by Ella Fitzgerald of Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” all recorded during ten. nights at the Crescendo Club, Hollywood, California, May 11 through 21 (with one night off), 1961. Some of this material was issued back then on an LP. Much more was released on CDs under the title Twelve Nights in Hollywood. (The title comes from the fact that the set included music from two more nights in 1962.) Ella’s musicians at this time were Lou Levy (p); Herb Ellis (g) (not Jim Hall, as listed on the LPs and CDs); Wilfred Middlebrooks (b); and Gus Johnson (d).
Ella was a true improvisor. Notice how different these performances are —her musicians have to work hard to keep up with her. As always, even when singing the lyrics, before she goes into scatting, she takes liberties with the words. On the two audio versions below, instead of encouraging listeners simply to “Take the ‘A’ Train” to Harlem, as she often did, she sings Strayhorn’s original phrase which was “to Sugar Hill in Harlem.” “Sugar Hill” is a neighborhood in the northern part of Harlem where many famous and distinguished Black Americans lived.
To start with today, here’s another version that was never released. Whereas the others are all in the middle of a set, this one comes after an intermission, and she says “Back to work.” She’s ready—she sings differently in the introduction, and seems to wish that they could extend it. Her second time through the song at 1:30 is even more free than usual. At 4:22 she quotes the The British Grenadiers march, as she did on the other unissued version from last time. At 4:42, the guitarist, perhaps sensing that she could go on forever, takes charge and initiates the riff that she cued on the other versions. She is bursting full of invention, right up to the ending:
Now, here’s the performance that’s on the four-CD boxed set (and streaming) called Twelve Nights in Hollywood. You’ll hear her say near the beginning, “Now you can talk all you want.” Of course she doesn’t really mean that. She’s hoping the audience will get the message to not talk, because the previous two numbers were slow ballads, and she had already chided them for being noisy, saying “I’m tired of you defeating me.” As always she sends musical quotations flying by, too quickly for any listener to identify them all at first hearing—for example, she scats “Stormy Weather” at 3:10, and the U.S. Air Force song at 4:54! This is the one version where there’s no guitar riff before the end. Listen, and enjoy!:
One thing that impresses me about Ella is the way that she always goes instantly into what some psychologists call “The Zone,” or being “Locked in.” She closes her eyes and she becomes the music. Nothing could distract her until that piece is over. You can hear that in her voice, for sure, but for this aspect of her work, film and video are best, where you can see the intense focus in her face and in her entire body. As an example, here’s an amazing rendition from BBC-TV in 1965, accompanied by Tommy Flanagan (pno), Keter Betts (bs), and Ed Thigpen (dms). She takes it at a much faster tempo, but the basic arrangement is the same as in 1961. And the quotes keep coming—”A Tisket, A Tasket” at 1:46, a song called “Lean Baby” at 2:15 (thank you to drummer and Founding Member Andrew Dickeson for identifying this), “Chattanooga Choo Choo” at 2:30 (but very differently from the way she inserted it in our previous post), and more. Flanagan brings in the ending a bit abruptly—there’s probably a director in the wings telling him that they’re out of time—but, luckily for us, she responds by stretching out the ending more than on any of the other versions we’ve heard:
Wow! That entire BBC-TV program, along with another Ella performance backed by saxophonist Tubby Hayes in a big band, is here.
If you want to read about the brilliant Ella Fitzgerald, the latest biography is by musicologist Judith Tick, who spent over ten years researching it. (Full disclosure: I answered questions for her now and then, uncredited.) See you again soon!
All the best,
Lewis
P.S. Thank you to Richard Seidel and Ken Druker for assistance with this post.
The tune she quotes at 2:15 on the video version is “My Lean Baby” or “Lean Baby” which is the name Sinatra recorded it under in 1953
This stuff is really quite wonderful, especially the London set and the BBC recording of it. I watched the two BBC programs in the link, and found he audio and music mix quite good, also video production, direction, and camera work. They have Ella on a very nice German Omni mic, which has none of the bass boost issues of mics used in sound reinforcement, so her voice is quite natural throughout. On one of the orchestral tracks, I thought I heard the hand of Nelson Riddle in a french horn voicing.
I worked in television in the early '60s, and picture quality on video recording was considerably better than what's on the BBC programs. A far better transfer could be made of the original tape if it's still available. Examples of much better transfers are on the Ella Jazz Icons DVD from Denmark in '57 and Sweden in '63. Another much better example is on my The Sound of Jazz" Laserdisc, which is from a kinescope, which is inferior to the 2-in videotape that came on the scene around '59.
Videotape was a big new thing in the early '60s, and the station where I worked as a college freshman, in Huntington WV, had two machines full of vacuum tubes, with two full time engineers whose only job was to keep them running. We were the only station around with two machines, so they did a lot of dubbing of programs and commercials for other stations. :) And this was still B/W.
I consider these audio and video quality issues important, because they can cause younger listeners to experience this as "old-timey" stuff, whereas great quality carries much more of the impact of the performance.