Cover of Ella Fitzgerald's Like Someone in Love, Verve Records, 1957. Photo credit: Phil Stern. Image source: Goatless
Technology can revolutionize not only artistic form, but content. The advent of the 12-inch 33 1/3 RPM long-playing record in the late 1940s and early 1950s is a case in point. The LP could hold up to 25 minutes of music on a side, in comparison to the 12 minutes of the 10-inch 45 RPM or the four minutes of the 78 RPM records that were then the standard formats. With its greater duration, the LP made possible whole albums of sustained moods or overarching themes.
A key early example is Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours (1955), an album of meditations on lost love that was precipitated by his failing marriage to Ava Gardner. Filled with melancholy ballads in arrangements by the brilliant Nelson Riddle, the album's mood is reflected in the cover art featuring a pensive Sinatra smoking a cigarette late at night under a lamppost on a deserted urban street.
Cover of Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours, Capitol Records, 1955. Image source: Amazon.ca
Sinatra wasn't the only one exploring the possibilities of the longer format. The year after the release of In the Wee Small Hours, jazz producer Norman Granz began showcasing Ella Fitzgerald on his new Verve label in a thematic project enabled by the LP: the Song Book series. Each entry in the series was devoted to the work of a single songwriter or songwriting team of the Great American Songbook. Ultimately the series consisted of eight releases comprising 15 hours of music on 19 LPs: double albums for Cole Porter (1956), Rodgers & Hart (1956), Irving Berlin (1958), and Harold Arlen (1961); a four-LP boxed set for Duke Ellington in both big band and small ensemble modes (1957); a five-LP set for George & Ira Gershwin (1959); and single albums for Jerome Kern (1963) and Johnny Mercer (1964).
Cover of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Verve Records, 1956. Image source: "Celebrating Ella Fitzgerald's Life Through the Objects That Defined Her Career" by Lily Rothman and Liz Ronk, Time, 25 April 2017.
The first albums in the Song Book series were immediate successes. But in the middle of recording the series—in fact, in the same month she recorded The Duke Ellington Song Book—Ella went back into the studio with an orchestra playing arrangements and conducted by Frank DeVol. On 15 October 1957 they recorded eleven tracks (!), four with Stan Getz on tenor sax; returning almost two weeks later on 28 October, they recorded another eight tracks with Ted Nash on alto sax. Fifteen of the nineteen tracks recorded in these sessions were released as the album Like Someone in Love in early December of the same year. Thirty-four years later the album would be released on CD, with the addition of the remaining four tracks from the 28 October session. And thirty-five years after that, I would come across the CD at my local public library sale and discover anew the brilliance of Ella Fitzgerald at her peak.
Like Someone in Love is Ella's In the Wee Small Hours, an album of torch songs that creates a hushed mood. The songs express anticipation and yearning; the joys of dawning love and the sorrow of inevitable loss. Ella's inimitable voice had gained warmth but lost little of its purity as she entered her 40s. Cushioned by DeVol's lush string arrangements and accompanied on four of the tracks by Stan Getz's understated soloing, Ella's singing is seductive, caressing, and sometimes mournful.
Another notable aspect of the album is its song choice. Where each album in the Song Book series focuses on one songwriter, the expanded CD version of Like Someone in Love features songs by seventeen different lyricists and eighteen different composers (Johnny Mercer and Johnny Burke are the two lyricists each represented by two songs, and Jimmy Van Heusen the only composer represented by two songs). I had never before knowingly heard the work of many of the songwriters, as with the first track, "There's a Lull in My Life," with lyrics by Mack Gordon and music by Harry Revel:
Some of the songwriters who would later feature in the Song Book series are also represented here: Mercer, of course, supplying lyrics for Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke's "Midnight Sun" (re-recorded for the Johnny Mercer Song Book arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle) and Van Heusen's "I Thought About You"; George & Ira Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On" (re-recorded for the Gershwin Song Book, also arranged and conducted by Riddle); and Irving Berlin's "I Never Had A Chance" (which was not re-recorded for the Irving Berlin Song Book):
For me, among the delightful new discoveries on the album is "Then I'll Be Tired Of You," with music by Arthur Schwartz (composer of "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" and "Dancing In The Dark") and words by Yip Harburg (lyricist of "April In Paris" and "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"):
I'll never be tired of hearing Ella Fitzgerald. Like Someone in Love is 70 minutes of Ella captured in the era of her peak vocal artistry: pure pleasure.
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