Ella Fitzgerald: The Lost Berlin Tapes review: a rediscovered masterpiece

Not every “lost” jazz recording rescued from a record company archive and rushed out on CD is a masterpiece. But this one certainly is. It’s the second live recording Fitzgerald made in Berlin, two years after the immortal 1960 recording released as Mack the Knife: Ella in Berlin, where she sang in front of 12,000 in the Sportpalast. That recording is now among the most popular in her catalogue, and ranks as one of the great live jazz vocal albums of all time. Could this unknown one, recently unearthed in the private archive of Verve Records founder Norman Granz, possibly rival it?

Yes, astonishingly. If anything Fitzgerald is on even better form, and there seems to be a special electricity in the crowd’s response, which could be due to the fact that since her first recording Berlin had become a divided city. The Berlin Wall had been constructed only seven months previously, and a visit by an American star like Fitzgerald was a precious symbol of freedom in a city surrounded by communist East Germany. Also there’s very little overlap in terms of songs. Summetime reappears, as does Mack the Knife, though on the newly released album Fitzgerald actually remembers the words of Kurt Weill’s song, unlike the 1960 album where she turns her memory lapse into an excuse for some virtuoso scatting. Apart from that it’s a different though equally generous set of seventeen songs, performed by the 45-year-old Fitzgerald at a moment when she’s absolutely on top form, and knows it.

For anyone used to the velvet-toned, sultry Fitzgerald of the studio albums, the high, youthful tone of the live albums always comes as a shock. That, and the sheer energy which just blows you away. In Mack the Knife she scats and growls as if her life depended on it, and just to add to the crowd’s excitement she and the trio raise the key-note in every verse (Fitzgerald’s trio are a real ornament to this disc, especially pianist Paul Smith, whose long, lingering postlude to Angel Eyes sets the seal on a beautiful version of a beautiful song). Even more deliriously fast is Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie, though under the crowd’s cheering you can hear that Ella and the trio are absolutely together at every point. The sheer technical brilliance of Fitzgerald is everywhere on display; one good example is Taking a Chance on Love, where she hits every note of the awkwardly turned introduction bang in the middle.

Although a cheerful mid-tempo swing is the dominant tempo and mood of the album, there’s plenty of variety. Fitzgerald growls in mock bad-temper in I Won’t Dance, caresses with a tone of burnished luxury in Summertime, and at the end of Good Morning Heartache laces the final line “Good morning…sit down” with a delicious blend of ironic tenderness and sauciness. At the end, she introduces Wee Baby Blues with a certain diffidence – “I don’t know too many blues, but I’d like to try” she says – and then delivers the song with magnificent throaty conviction. It’s a great ending to an album which will one day be described as “classic”, and rightly so.

The Lost Berlin Tapes is out now on the Verve label