Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald
"Gershwin: Porgy & Bess" (Vinyl)

It was quite a coup to discover this Verve double-LP pressing of the 1957 release of Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" in such beautiful condition.

Produced by Norman Granz, the release of this album coincided with the theatrical release of an adaptation of the same musical.

This isn't the entire musical, but rather a deliberately cherry picked selection of the highlights.  Today they are tunes that we all know well ("Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So") that are performed by two of the era's most important jazz vocalists.

Russell Garcia arranged and conducted the orchestra on this album.

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