MACK THE KNIFE: ELLA IN BERLIN
Ella Fitzgerald
1960

I was not aware this album had a reputation when I snagged it out of the discount bin at Strictly Discs – I liked the idea of having some Ella on vinyl and it was cheap. I knew “Mack the Knife,” “Summertime,” “Too Darn Hot,” “How High The Moon.” I still have the $7.99 sticker on my record sleeve. I’d really only listened to the Cole Porter and George Gershwin songbook albums, and while I thought Ella was an undeniable singer, I can’t pretend I really knew her well.

The first side of this album fit into my prior understanding of Ella. It’s largely midtempo, with “The Lady is a Tramp” kicking into higher gear in the second half. There’s some humor, especially on “Lorelei” and “The Lady is a Tramp,” songs that get to show her bright, fun side. The ballad “The Man I Love” is gorgeous, plaintive, intense. “Summertime” is a song she’s always owned, but here she’s able to give it a more playful heat than her classic recording with Louis Armstrong, the full string and brass section giving it a little too much ornamentation. Her Berlin rendition is more seductive, deeper until it’s higher, and the Paul Smith Quartet is light on their feet in adding improvised little flourishes rather than full breaks.

It’s side two that set my brain on fire, though. From the very beginning of “Too Darn Hot,” games with the audience start happening. She’s playing with the tempo and tone to have the kind of fun she’d never be allowed in the studio with a full orchestration. By the time she hits the first “Kinsey Report,” the band’s hot and they’re not interested in buttoning up again, hitting the interludes between songs with games that make her laugh. She starts growling, moaning, joking. They deliver the last song Ella knows on the set, “Lorelei,” with a relatively straight face, but it’s still hotter than the first side.

This album is most recognized for the next recording, the titular “Mack the Knife.” Ella opens the song by admitting she’s never sung it before and doesn’t really know the words. She changes the first line and never gets perfectly back on track. You can hear her laugh on “Sunday morning.” But then you hit “Oh, what’s the next chorus?” and she doesn’t ever even try to come back. It’s delightful to hear her simultaneously not know the song, make up something that fits the meter, and make it sound absolutely gorgeous. She jokes, “Oh, and now Ella! And her fella! We’re making a wreck! What a wreck! Of Mack the Knife!” before hitting an unbelievable scat sequence. She’s turned the song into a cat toy, batting it around and always keeping the joke on the ridiculousness of knowing the music this damn well and not having the words.

But, honestly, that doesn’t hold a candle to what she does next to “How High The Moon.” She actually jokes that the words may be wrong, but she gets through all of them before the band kicks into hyperdrive. I’d never heard scatting like she does on “How High The Moon.” The band follows her into entirely different songs (“Tisket-A-Tasket,” “Heat Wave,” , including the part where she effectively just starts buzzing. I didn’t know at the time that this was just what her version of “How High The Moon” had sounded like for a decade, had been recorded that way before, down to “the words may be wrong” – I’m as goggle-eyed as the audience even now. I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on scat or jazz more broadly – what I know is I heard this and I felt it was the most perfect recording of music I’ve heard then or since. Music is where you find it, and, for me, the iconic Ella live album will always be the one I happened to pluck from the discount bin.

KEY TRACKS: “Summertime,” “Too Darn Hot,” “Mack the Knife,” “How High The Moon”
CATALOG CHOICE: Ella Fitzgerald Live at Mr. Kelly’s, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
NEXT STOP: ‘Nuff Said!, Nina Simone
AFTER THAT: Odetta Sings Dylan