The moment of truth at Ella Fitzgerald’s concert 58 years ago… Video, Photos

Verve Records has released a new and never-before-released live album from the First Lady of Pop, Ella Fitzgerald. The Moment of Truth: Ella at the Coliseum is now available in all formats. The recordings were mixed and mastered with stunning clarity from the original analog multi-track tapes, resulting in a high-quality sound unheard of in concert recordings of the era.

The Moment of Truth: Ella At The Coliseum was recorded at the Oakland Coliseum on June 30, 1967, and was recently discovered in the private tape collection of Verve Records founder Norman Granz. The album features nine tracks, most of which have never been heard before, and features Ella backed by members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra, who were in their prime at the time.

This live album marks a particularly interesting period in Ella’s career. In the summer of 1967, she was in the midst of a highly successful three-year tour and recording with Duke Ellington, and her live repertoire included the pop classics of the late ’60s, two of which are featured here for the first time on disc; “Alfie” and “Music To Watch Girls By” are standout tracks on The Moment of Truth: Ella At The Coliseum. Cheered on stage by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Ella is both funny and powerful, bantering with the crowd and then captivating them with her incomparable voice. Ella’s band includes the rare but powerful trio of Jimmy Jones, Bob Cranshaw and Sam Woodyard, while Ellington’s band, pictured here at the height of their career, included Kat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope. The first lady of song meets the Duke’s servants – and it’s a sight to behold.

June 1967. The Beatles release “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the Middle East is in flames with the Six-Day War, the United States is preparing for elections that will launch Nixon and in the meantime exports “democracy” to Vietnam, while in many cities of the country racial riots are violently repressed by the police with thousands of arrests among the black demonstrators.

Ella Fitzgerald is 50 years old and has the world in her hands, in January they heard her with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in a livid and adoring East Berlin (a concert not to be confused with “Ella In Berlin – Mack The Knife“- Verve from 1960), in short she is in a golden period, also understood as a goose producing golden eggs that the producer Norman Granz makes her lay every day with concert tours that seem to never end.

There are now dozens of her concerts available but what do you want, some eggs don’t have an expiration date, and so we’ll gladly add this Oakland concert to our discos, the second set of a magic ticket that included, on the same evening, the Ellington Orchestra to open the dances. The tape was found, needless to say, in Granz’s private collection, and we find Ella with a trusted trio that sees Jimmy Jones (and not Duke!) on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Sam Woodyard on drums, joined by several true Ellingtonians, for a simply extraordinary accompaniment, for which any singer would pay gold, now as then.

Fitzgerald appears in great shape, and attracts all the attention of the public, the compact group behind her supports the Queen wonderfully and shows its muscles with Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves. The chosen repertoire contains songs that we had never heard from her voice and wittily skirts certain pop of the period (“Don’t Be That Way”, “Music To Watch Girls By”) winking at the audience, to whom Ella generously grants every drop of energy.

Ella masterfully closes her set with the classic “Mack The Knife”, by Kurt Weill, one of the Linus blankets that has accompanied her since she was a girl, the song was released in 1928 with lyrics written by Bertolt Brecht for the “Threepenny Opera” and there are many recordings both live and in the studio.

The applause crackles in the splendid acoustic rendition of the Verve house, which for about twenty/thirty euros, depending on the preferred CD / LP version, magically takes us to the Coliseum in Oakland, in June 1967, in the front row in front of the Queen of Jazz.