eMusic Review 0
You don't know jazz if you don't know Ella, the putative queen of the genre and master of scat. Not only did Fitzgerald have unparalleled talent — a clarion-clear voice and phrasing and a stunningly broad range (in the ’80s, she made a commercial for Memorex in which she hit a note so high that it apparently shattered a glass) — but she also had drive. She lived to sing, which is fortunate for the rest of us, because she left us with armloads of albums to explore, from her voracious readings of the songbooks (Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin) to her live performances and collaborations with Louis Armstrong. Dream Dancing, an album of Cole Porter songs, features popular standards like "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "I've Got You Under My Skin," but it also has a deliciously over-the-top rendition of the lesser-known "C'est Magnifique." Ooh, la la.