Discoveries Worth Sharing: You Can Sing Any Jazz Song...

There's a really enjoyable discussion over at NPR's Jazz Blog, A Blog Supreme, between Patrick Jarenwattananon and Anya Grundmann (a.k.a. "Boss Lady") that was posted Friday. Patrick and Anya collaborate on a regular feature called "Listening, Party for Two," wherein the former will pick out a "great jazz song" for the latter and the two will discuss it over the Internet. This latest post features an amazing live performance of Ella Fitzgerald in West Berlin, which features about 5+ minutes of straight scatting.

The vocal virtuosity is impressive in and of itself, but then you learn that it's chock full of song interpolation too:

[Patrick]: Surely, you heard "Poinciana" (start of the scat solo), or "Stormy Weather," or "Rhapsody In Blue," or "I Want To Be Happy," or "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" (her first hit in the '30s), or the interpolation of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" as "Sweat Gets In Your Eyes" at the end ...

Boss Lady: Looks like I'd better listen again. Because I was focused on Ella's voice and her pyrotechnics, but all of those references flew by unnoticed. Sigh.

[Patrick]: ...or Ferde Grofe's "On The Trail," or the Ethel Waters number "Tropical Heat Wave," or "El Manicero," or even a Charlie Parker tune called ["Ornithology"] which was based on the chord changes to this song.

I definitely sat through about 3/4 of the song and had no idea. To hear the song and read the full post, click here.

And in other news, Ella Fitzgerald and Jimmy Fallon have something in common:



(Err, I also owned one of those Stretch Armstrong dolls. Whoa. This post is spiraling out of control.)