Ella Fitzgerald - Ella & Louis Again (Verve Acoustic Sound Series) - VINYL LP

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing in gatefold jacket. After appearing together at an all-star concert the night before, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong went into an L.A. studio to record this gem of an album. Despite having little to no time for rehearsals, the sublime artistic mastery of Ella and Louis and the instant chemistry they achieved resulted in one of the few truly indispensable recordings in all of jazz. Verve's Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes.

Vinyl LP pressing. 2021 . It was produced and recorded at International Anthem Studios in Chicago between March and June of 2021. Across sixteen tracks Gay fluently interweaves jazz, blues, ballads, R&B, raga, new music, nursery rhyme, tropicalia, two-step, hip-hop and beyond in a beaming expression of his signature omni-genre InchPan-AmericanaInch brew. Alongside his own sizable toolkit of instruments (cornet, keyboards, synthesizers, flutes, percussions), Gay surrounds himself with steady bandmates (including Tommaso Moretti on drums, Matthew Davis on tuba, and Rob Frye on woodwinds), while also shining the spotlight on female artists from his cast of regular collaborators. Featured artists on the album include OHMME singers Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart, bassist/vocalist/arranger Ayanna Woods, multi-disciplinary Rwandan artist Dorothée Munyaneza, poet A. Martinez, cellist Tomeka Reid, and vocalists Onye Ozuzu, Gira Dahnee, and Angel Bat Dawid.

Vinyl LP repressing of this collaborative album between to of Jazz's greatest starts. The evening before Louis Armstrong recorded this album, both he and Miss Fitzgerald were appearing in an all-star concert also featuring Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson that was recorded for an album entitled Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1956). The following day the two singers, along with the Oscar Peterson Trio, were in a Los Angeles studio to record this gem of an album. With no time for rehearsals the songs were all set in Louis' key to make it easier, but this in no way inhibits Ella's performance. Another challenge for Pops was the fact that the material was not his normal repertoire, meaning he had to learn things on the fly in the studio. Again there's no hint of any issues, which all goes to highlight Armstrong's innate musical ability.