Ella Fitzgerald
Day Dream: The Best of the Duke Ellington Songbook (Verve 537 842)

Of Ella's songbook collections, the Duke Ellington and Rodgers & Hart ones are my favorites, and depending on my mood, I might declare either one to be her masterpiece. (Good, got my requisite use of the word "masterpiece" out of the way in the first sentence.)

The Rodgers & Hart album is a sentimental favorite, but the Duke Ellington may be Ella's greatest achievement all around. Her voice is perfectly suited to Ellington's songwriting masterpieces, and the band plays as though they are creating a masterpiece. The result is a masterpiece full of masterpiece masterpiece masterpiece. (Gee gah, this is getting out of hand.)

Day Dream is a one-disc distillation of the best moments from the 3-disc full Duke Ellington Songbook set, and it's solid start to finish, buoyed by classics like "Azure," "Mood Indigo," "Take the 'A' Train," "Solitude," and "It Don't Mean a Thing (if It Ain't Got That Swing)," the last of which today's swing enthusiasts as well as yesterday's saran wrap enthusiasts can finally agree on.

Overall, the whole Ellington set is preferable both aesthetically and for the breadth of its content, but for an overview of the collaboration between Ella and Duke, you can't go wrong with Day Dream.

What I think separates the Ellington songbook set from the other great ones from Ella's discography (Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, Gershwin) is that this one allows Ella to explore her "straight" side on the ballads, and her scat side on the big-band workouts ("Bli-Blip," "The E and D Blues," "Squatty Roo," among others).

So you get a clear picture of Ella's range as a vocalist, but without getting either too sappy (as on some of the Gershwin songs) or too out there (as on, say, the ill-advised Sunshine of Your Love, which is a hoot in its own right but for entirely different reasons).

Both Ella and Duke are toned-down versions of their past selves on the recording (this was 1957), but that's not a bad thing … in fact, I prefer the rather more tasteful approach than the "burning" swing stuff from the 30s and 40s – plus, the 50s sessions benefit from a little something called "sound quality."

It's probably incongruous to award this disc a lesser rating than the larger set from which it is drawn, seeing as the recordings themselves are no different, but my view is, why settle for a half order of potato skins when you can have the whole plate?

But if you're not all that hungry for potato skins, Day Dream is a good substitute. Wait … exactly how many months has it been since I last made any sense whatsoever?

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Joe Rotgut