eMusic Review 0
Fitzgerald was not only the unchallenged master of the songbook album, she was also the pioneer of the live-in-concert recording, and it was this 1960 release that did more than any other to put the very idea of the concert album on the map. First, the idea of a great African American artist bringing jazz and the American songbook to the doorstep of the communists was a potent one at the height of the cold war — especially in that she used a German song, the hit tune from The Threepenny Opera, as the climax of the program. No less importantly, Fitzgerald was literally on fire throughout the entire set, particularly on "Mack the Knife," in which she made a brilliant spectacle of forgetting the words and improvising new ones. It was an amazing jazz moment that, for the grace of Norman Granz, was captured on audiotape and preserved for posterity. If someone ever asked me to name the greatest live album ever, by anyblody, this is probably what I'd pick.
