Jun 152020
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald, “the First Lady of Song,” the “Queen of Jazz,” or simply “Lady Ella,” got her first big break at an Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater, a place where many stars first got their start (Diana Ross & the Supremes, Aretha Franklin, and Lauryn Hill, to name but a few). She went on to have an almost 30-year-long career, recording over 200 albums and collecting many awards, including 14 Grammys (making her the woman with the fifth most overall), the National Medal of Arts (given by President Ronald Reagan), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (given by President George H. W. Bush), and internationally, admission into France’s Order of Arts and Letters. She even got her own stamp and was featured in the Google Doodle.

Fitzgerald was a trailblazer. She was the first African American woman to win a Grammy for Best Vocal Performance and Best Jazz Performance and the first woman to be nominated for Album of the Year during the first-ever Grammy awards in 1959. Eight years later, she became the first woman to win the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

She collaborated with many others musicians throughout the course of her career (as we’ll see below), often making old songs her own. Despite her popularity and her status as a major jazz influencer, Fitzgerald still faced discrimination (she once was arrested backstage at her own show). Fitzgerald had powerful advocates though, including Marilyn Monroe, a big fan who used her popularity to advocate for Fitzgerald to perform at a popular club, Mocambo.

Today, on the anniversary of her death and in her memory, we listen to covers of some of her originals (for the cover sticklers) and covers of her own covers (although arguably she popularized these tunes). Before reading on, I encourage you to listen to Fitzgerald’s response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, a song called “It’s Up to Me and You.” Her message, “let’s not hate and let’s not wait,” rings true today.

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Jan 122016
 

   Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 01:  Photo of Sam Cooke  (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

“Summertime,” one of the most covered songs in music history (just ask The Summertime Connection), has always inspired masterful performances. The song weaves simple yet potent lyrics with a slow, steady harmonic progression, paving the way for poised renditions, yet its strengths allow the artists to freely improvise this musical masterpiece to make it distinctly their own. Covers range from chilling and ominous to sultry and even joyous, always maintaining the song’s soulful cool. Most importantly, “Summertime”‘s depth provides a canvas for inspired artists to create breathtakingly beautiful art.
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Nov 132014
 

These days, it seems that every band or artist puts out tracks before new albums come out, and it’s easy to understand why – at $1.29 on iTunes, an individual song purchase costs more than it would in relation to the album, or, if you get the tracks by pre-ordering, you’re locked in for the whole shebang. Most, however, will release a track or two in anticipation. That, apparently, is not She & Him‘s style. In the last few weeks, the easy-listening power-duo of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward have already released four tracks (out of thirteen total) from their upcoming collection of standards, Classics, which comes out on December 2. Continue reading »

Sep 062013
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Side four of the Beatles’ White Album has some of the widest stylistic swings on one side of one record, ever – there’s music hall (“Honey Pie”), there’s chaos (“Revolution 9”), there’s what John himself called “possibly overlush” (“Good Night”). We close our four-part salute by matching the shifts in sound stride for stride, and believe us, we have a fine time doing it.
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Nov 292011
 

A few weeks ago, we posted Amy Winehouse’s reggae cover of “Our Love Will Come.” It came off her upcoming rarities comp Lioness: Hidden Treasures and now we have another taste. She covers the bossa nova standard “The Girl from Ipanema” in such imitable Winehouse style that you’ll mourn her all over again. Continue reading »

Sep 212011
 

Every Wednesday, our resident Gleek Eric Garneau gives his take on last night’s Glee covers.

In “The Purple Piano Project,” Coach Schuester rallies the troops after last spring’s devastating Nationals loss in New York City. New Directions needs to recruit, and it needs its mojo back. But the antagonistic Sue Sylvester — now running for a seat in Congress – has once again made up her mind to squash the glee club’s dreams. Also, alliteration abounds.

Hi everybody! Welcome back from summer break to my weekly Glee write-ups. I enjoyed writing this feature last year, and it seems like enough of you enjoyed reading it to warrant my continuation, so on we go into season three!

The show made a few subtle (not often a word we associate with Glee) changes coming into this latest season to address criticisms from the last – most notably, that the show had grown aimless. To guard against that happening again, the creative trio behind Glee did something new over the summer – they outsourced their writing. Now Brad Falchuk, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have a co-executive producer, two consulting producers and two staff writers to help them craft stories (most interesting to me is Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a veteran of Spider-Man comic books and, yes, the recent musical). Continue reading »