I'm starting a new long-term theme. I looked at movies and the Oscars in my last theme - - now I'm going to look at music and the Grammys. I hope you enjoy it.
I started the movie/Oscar theme with 1939, ten years into the awards, the year of Gone With the Wind, what many people see as the greatest year of American movies. Well, this time I'm going to start with the first year of the Grammys, the awards given in 1959 for music recorded in 1958.
The Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Individual went to Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook. It's an amazing recording by any standards, made with the Ellington band doing Ellington arrangements. Heaven!
It's too easy to choose an up-tempo song as the Diva and the ballad as the Mensch. I've done this many times and it's LAZY. So to counteract this I'm choosing two ballads from this collection:
Diva: "I Didn't Know About You"
Mensch: "Azure"
"I Didn't Know About You" opens with a weak-in-the-knees saxophone solo by Paul Gonsalves. The band arrangement has the glint and sparkle of diamonds in the dark. BTW I need to get the 1958 Grammy for Liner Notes, just for that one phrase! Anyway, "I Didn't Know About You" is intimate in a way that reaches out to the listener.
"Azure" is intimate in a way that draws the listener in. It's a duet for Fitzgerald and guitar player Barney Kessel. Quiet, understated, warm rather than cool.
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