This is the gold standard of American song interpretation—Ella Fitzgerald, at her radiant peak, with Nelson Riddle’s orchestrations turning the Gershwin catalog into a flawless 5-LP monument. Every jazz and vocal fan should own it, preferably on vinyl, preferably late at night.
You don’t approach the Gershwin Songbook. You clear your schedule, pour something amber, and let it arrive.
It takes forty-three musicians to get the needle into the groove. Nelson Riddle’s chart for “I Got Rhythm” begins with a brass fanfare so confident it feels like a coronation, then pulls back to let Ella pick her way through the verse as if she just thought of the melody. That’s the trick of this whole box set — Riddle gives her a ballroom, and she acts like the party hasn’t started yet.
They recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood across sessions in January and March of 1959. Norman Granz, no stranger to big ideas, had already produced the Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hart songbooks. But the Gershwin set was his masterpiece: fifty-nine songs spread across five LPs, each side sequenced like a perfectly drunken setlist. Some of these tunes Gershwin wrote for Broadway, some for Hollywood, some for the concert hall. Ella treated them all as if they’d been waiting their whole lives for her.
The band deserves its own paragraph. Barney Kessel’s guitar cuts through the string section on “But Not for Me” like a man who knows exactly when to speak and when to listen. Plas Johnson’s tenor sax curls around the fade of “Embraceable You” with the kind of restraint most musicians never learn. Mel Lewis keeps time on brushes so light you almost forget he’s there — until you do, and the whole thing floats.
Val Valentin engineered the sessions, and he knew better than to put the microphone too close. There’s air around Ella’s voice here, a sense that she’s standing in the middle of a room full of woodwinds and she doesn’t need to shout. That’s what makes this recording still sound like a living performance sixty-five years later. You can hear the distance between the trumpet section and the lead vocal, and that distance is what makes the intimacy land.
What the arrangement knows
Riddle never over-explains a lyric. On “The Man I Love,” the strings hold a single note for an extra bar after Ella finishes the phrase “someday he’ll come along.” It’s a tiny hesitation, but it feels like a held breath. That moment — that split second of orchestral stillness — is where the entire album lives. Gershwin wrote these songs to be inhabited, not just sung, and Riddle understood that the space around the voice is as important as the voice itself.
My one strong opinion: the five-LP structure is not a gimmick. It forces you to live inside the Gershwin universe for hours. You can’t skip. You can’t queue the hits. You sit through “Slap That Bass” and then “I Was Doing All Right” and then “He Loves and She Loves,” and somewhere in the middle of side three you realize that Gershwin wrote the same love song twenty different ways because he knew no two kinds of longing sound the same.
The soundstage on the original Verve pressing is so wide you could park a car between the left and right channels. If you’re lucky enough to have a pair of speakers that image well, the horns sit in a perfect arc behind her, the piano slightly to the left, the bass anchoring the center like a friend who doesn’t need to talk.
Ella sings “Someone to Watch Over Me” toward the end of the set, and she takes it slower than you remember. The tempo sits just behind the beat for the first chorus, and you can hear her breathing — not a mistake, but a choice. She wants you to wait for the resolution. She wants you to know what it feels like to need the next note.
That’s the whole record, really. Fifty-nine songs of wanting the next note.
🎵 Key Takeaways
- Forty-three musicians played on the Gershwin Songbook sessions.
- Nelson Riddle's brass fanfare on 'I Got Rhythm' feels like a coronation.
- Barney Kessel's guitar cuts through strings on 'But Not for Me'.
- Plas Johnson's tenor sax shows restraint on 'Embraceable You' fade.
- Val Valentin's distant mic creates air around Ella's voice.
- Fifty-nine songs across five LPs sequenced like a drunken setlist.
Why is the Gershwin Songbook considered Ella Fitzgerald's definitive album?
Because it captures her at her technical peak with the arranger who understood her best. Nelson Riddle wrote orchestras that wrapped around her like a second skin, and she had the stamina to record fifty-nine songs without losing a single syllable of diction or emotion.
What’s the difference between the original 1959 vinyl and the later CD reissues?
The original Verve pressings have a warmer, more natural midrange because they were cut from the master tapes before any digital remastering. The 1998 reissue by Polygram is cleaner but loses the slight tube bloom that made the vocals feel alive. Aim for an original mono pressing if you can find one.
Is this album good for a casual listener or just for jazz fans?
It's the best possible entry point for anyone who thinks they don't like jazz. The songs are the most famous American standards ever written, the arrangements are lush but never dense, and Ella sings with such clarity that you hear every word. It's musical comfort food with a five-star chef.