The Moment of Truth is music full of memorable moments
It was June of 1967. What music filled the air and the airwaves? The Beatles had released an album called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Barbra Streisand performed a free concert in Central Park for 135,000 people. At the Monterey Pop Festival, music fans witnessed the first high-profile appearances of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Who and a “who’s who” of singer-songwriters – including Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Pete Seeger – performed at the Newport Folk Festival. On the last day of the month, jazz lovers might have gone to that Rhode Island spot for the annual Jazz Festival where Joe Williams, Count Basie, and Dizzy Gillespie were on the bill. But that same night, in Oakland, California, the great jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald was warmly received, as evidenced in the exciting live album titled The Moment of Truth – Ella at the Coliseum. This is not a reissue; it was never released until this year. It is, in a word, terrific.
Ella & Band, 1966 (© Tom Copi, San Francisco)
The beloved entertainer was in great voice, singing great songs that suited her, with great musicians – including members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra (although Duke himself is not heard). Who could ask for anything more? Well, with only nine tracks, that might not be the usual rhetorical question, but most of the selections are on the longer side. Things start with the shortest track, a brisk and robust romp through the title song of The Moment of Truth. Truth be told, the concert is gem after gem, but that will come as no surprise to those who know the score regarding the legend known knocking it out of the park (or, in this case, the Coliseum). The joyful jazz renditions refresh and refashion old tunes by tweaking, twisting, bending, and expanding notes. They swing. They soar. They sizzle. If a poet were asked to set forth words about this set, to tersely describe the supple-voiced singer’s work here, with wordplay and rhyme, the result might be: “Each ‘Ella’-ment/ Is ‘Ella’-quent / And ‘Ella’-gant.” But a more thoroughly insightful and informed analysis comes with the liner notes by music expert, critic, and author Will Friedwald.
Ella (Photopress ArchivKeystone - Bridgeman Images)
Feel the excitement! The Moment of Truth finds performers and fans very much in the moment. It’s palpable as the fabulous Fitzgerald skillfully scat-sings up a storm and interacts with the musicians, and humor is shared with the occasional quip, such as casually and cutely addressing an audience member strolling in late (“You missed the first song”). As one number ends, someone in the crowd can’t hold himself back from yelling out, “Clap if you love this lady!” The advice, while heeded, was hardly needed, as there’d already been big bursts of appreciative applause.
Glancing at the set list of recognizable titles doesn’t give the whole picture of the words you’ll hear. For “In a Mellow Tone,” all that really remains of the original lyric is the title phrase as she rhymes “tone” with comments about a “saxophone” and “trombone” as she praises the musicians before switching to one of her deft forays into scat-singing. There are also extra words for the Cole Porter list song “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” bringing the 1928 piece into the 1960s by name-dropping The Beatles, James Bond, and Sonny and Cher (although she mispronounces Cher to make it rhyme with “her”). As was her wont, while well into an established number, she’ll playfully plop in bits of melody and/or words from something else. It’s kind of jarring at first, during an exceptionally exquisite and tender ballad reading of “Alfie” to get the boldness of “You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Loves You” but the latter’s titular message does match “Alfie”’s point that “Without true love we just exist.” The tour de force finale is her famous frolic through “Mack the Knife,” including her vocal impersonation of Louis Armstrong and a mention of Bobby Darin (the guys who’d both previously reinvented the simmering tale of a criminal into frisky fun). While it’s a surefire audience pleaser to cap the night, it can’t replicate the impact of the version recorded live in Berlin seven years earlier, when she first pounced on it, and the embellishments were unexpected and she turned trouble to triumph when she went blank on part of the lyric and blithely improvised words about forgetting the words.
The First Lady of Song’s manager/album producer, Norman Granz, had recorded many of her concerts; some were released in short order, some belatedly (some of those posthumously), and some not at all. They keep coming. It can be difficult to keep track of all the bonus tracks on reissues, not to mention all the different renditions of classics that show up in multiple shows with arrangements that may or may not be similar to each other — or to versions appearing on a studio album (and then possibly revisited with different arrangements and instrumentation on another). When it comes to her repertoire, fervent Fitzgerald followers know that some songs were favored frequently. For example, take the second number: “Don’t Be That Way.” It’s a standard that was actually introduced on record in an instrumental version by the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1934, a year before Webb hired the teenaged Ella. She recorded studio versions of this number in the 1950s (in duet with Louis Armstrong), in the 1970s (accompanied by guitarist Joe Pass), and three times with Nelson Riddle conducting an orchestra (in the 1960s both on a studio set and when she guesting on a Frank Sinatra TV special released on DVD and then in the 1980s on yet another studio release).
An Ella Fitzgerald album always has surprises built in. But what’s not a surprise is that the performance will have polish and panache. And that can make for perfection in the collection.
The Moment of Truth recording is on the Verve record label. The musicians are Jimmy Jones, Bob Cranshaw, and Sam Woodyard, plus members of the Duke Ellington band, featuring Cat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges, and Russell Procope.
Track Listing:
- The Moment Of Truth – 2:52
- Don’t Be That Way – 4:33
- You’ve Changed – 4:37
- Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) – 4:43
- Bye Bye Blackbird – 5:02
- Alfie – 5:43
- In a Mellow Tone – 4:41
- Music to Watch Girls By – 3:56
- Mack the Knife – 4:53
Recorded at The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA on June 30, 1967.
available digitally, and physically on CD or LP
