Ella Fitzgerald — Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (1956)
Ella’s Cole Porter Song Book isn’t just a jazz masterpiece — it’s proof that old music, when approached with real attention, carries a depth most modern recordings can only gesture toward.
By Rafi Mercer
There’s a moment early in this album — somewhere between “All Through the Night” and “Anything Goes” — when you realise Ella Fitzgerald isn’t just interpreting Cole Porter. She’s revealing him. Not with force, not with flourish, but with the kind of steady, confident clarity you only get from an artist who understands that great music doesn’t need to be improved, only illuminated.
Listening to this record today, nearly seventy years after its release, I felt something I rarely feel with modern music: the sense of craft rising off the surface. Every phrase, every breath, every horn line behind her is balanced with an intentionality we’ve almost forgotten how to hear. In an era where songs chase attention, Ella stands in the centre of these arrangements with the calm assurance of someone who already earned it.
What struck me, as I listened carefully, is how much depth old music actually contains when you stop treating it as background noise. These tracks were made in rooms where people played together, watched each other, reacted in real time. No fixes. No tuning. No layers designed to distract you. The warmth you hear isn’t nostalgia — it’s the sound of presence.
Ella is in perfect voice here, but it’s not perfection that moves you. It’s her restraint. She never overshadows Porter’s writing. Instead, she becomes a kind of lens — clean, elegant, effortless. Take “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” a song often sung with unnecessary drama. Ella does the opposite. She subtracts everything until only truth remains. A simple melody. A quiet ache. A line delivered with such honesty you almost lean closer without realising it.
That’s the real lesson in this album: old music rewards patience. If you give it your full attention, the songs open, layer by layer. You hear the shaping of vowels. The slight rise of a string section. The air moving between her and the microphone. The difference between a singer who understands the lyric and one who merely performs it.
And once you hear music this way — with intent, with stillness — something changes. You start recognising why records like this endure. Not because they are old. Not because we romanticise the past. But because they were built with a depth that withstands time. A depth you can’t access unless you slow down long enough to allow it in.
Ella was many things over her career, but on this album she is something rare: a guide through a world of emotional nuance we’ve grown too hurried to visit. She makes complexity seem simple, and simplicity seem eternal.
That’s the beauty of careful listening. It doesn’t just reveal the music. It reveals how much of yourself you’ve been rushing past.
Quick Questions
Is this Ella’s most critically acclaimed album?
Yes — it is widely considered the definitive peak of her artistry.
Is it an easy place to begin?
Effortlessly. These songs invite you in rather than challenging you.
Why does it endure?
Because Ella understood that truth sits beneath the melody — and she had the grace to let you hear it.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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