A Word on Ella Fitzgerald

I listen to jazz. That statement, which should be a simple statement of opinion (if there ever is such a thing) feels loaded with subtexts: jazz seems like an impossibly adult genre to enjoy, and at the same time brings to mind a smug, cozy Starbucksian aesthetic, a bourgeois pleasure whose bourgeoisness is made all the more obvious by the divide that exists between those who originally played and listened to jazz, and those who later appropriated it to enjoy with their half-sweet soy Tazo™ chai latte (this is actually the drink I order when I go to Starbucks – and yes, I occasionally go there). But this is not a contrived pleasure of mine, and it predates Starbucks – I started listening to jazz when I was in my early teens. Nothing too crazy: Miles Davis and John Coltrane and, of course, Ella Fitzgerald. Specifically the Cole Porter songbook. I wanted to be a swell like Cole Porter. I subscribed, apparently, to an antiquated notion of sophistication. (“You’re the National Gallery, you’re Garbo’s salary, you’re cellophane,” goes the song “You’re the Top.”) But actually, it’s true: they don’t make swells like Porter any more. That whole ascerbic urbane Dorothy Parker schtick. (Come on – “the tin-pantithesis of melody”? Now there’s a lyric.)

Anyway, this isn’t about Cole Porter. This is about Miss Fitzgerald. I don’t know anyone who gets passionate about Ella Fitzgerald. She never had a hook. But her singing is the purest singing I’ve ever heard. If Billie Holiday is a glass of rough red wine, and Sarah Vaughan an over-sweet honey-drenched Middle Eastern dessert, Ella is just a nice big glass of milk. If I may continue with metaphors, listening to her voice gives me the simple pleasure had by a child listening to her kindergarden teacher. She looks like a kindergarden teacher too, actually. I think that’s one of the reasons why she’s considered a stand-by, because there was nothing sensational about her: she never had tumultuous marriages or drug habits, never dripped with sex appeal, never seemed eccentric. She was just a big, sweet, simple-seeming woman. There is a danger in her singing that nothing human comes forth, but then listen to the version of “Mack the Knife” she did for a live audience in Berlin – forgetting all but the first verse, she makes up the rest, laughing at herself all the way through. But never once does she let the audience down – like some progenitor of contemporary rappers, she never misses a beat or a rhyme. (My favourite line is where she’s supposed to be saying, “Didja hear about Louis Miller? He disappeared, babe, after drawing out all his hard-earned cash,” and she just says, “Miller, Louis Miller… Ahhh, something about cash.”) I don’t know how she does it, I really don’t.

So, Miss Fitzgerald, I raise my nice big glass of milk in a toast to you.