'they can't take that away from me'

"They can't take that away from me"
George and Ira Gershwin
Performed by Ella Fitzgerald
Album: Ella a Nice (live)

wow. ella is amazing. the recording is live from Nice, and her combo is fabulous as well. To begin the song, Ella starts one bar before the refrain, completely skipping the verse (common practice among the well-known jazz charts). For the first four bars of the refrain Ella stays pretty true to the chart, playing with a rhythm here and there...adding a bit of vocal inflection...but after that...she's amazing! Half the reason I love jazz so much is because it's all about taking the chart and then changing it to 'make it your own'...wow--ella owns this one. She stretches or condenses rhythms, changes and adds notes, and sometimes repeats words that she finds to be particularly compelling.

Gershwin uses a lot of cliche progressions, among them being the I-ii7 over the fifth-#ii add 6 over the fifth-I6 (so in Eb: Eb-Fm7/Bb-F#m6/Bb-Eb/G) this is followed by a flat three diminished chord leading to a ii-V-ii-IV-V-I....wow. Gershwin, that progression is great. Because his melody is reasonably simple (jumps within the tonic triad or step-wise motion) it gives the performer a lot of freedom to embellish.

I love this song, and I particularly love this performance. She's flawless...I love it. At least in jazz if you hold any note long enough it's correct! :) If you haven't heard this recording...I highly recommend it. (the entire album is great, she's does some great medleys and her scatting in later tracks is phenomenal). enjoy!