Ella Fitzgerald Let No Man Write My Epitaph (Verve Acoustic Sounds Series) 180g LP

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 5/5 Sonics in the March 2024 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Considered one of Ella's greatest recordings, she's backed on this 1960 release by pianist Paul Smith. Let No Man Write My Epitaph was a 1960 Hollywood movie featuring Fitzgerald. The album hits at a depth of emotional understanding that critics often complained was missing in Ella's reading of jazz lyrics, and once again establishes her as one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook.

Seeking to offer definitive audiophile-grade versions of some of the most historic and best jazz records ever recorded, Verve Label Group and Universal Music Enterprises' audiophile Acoustic Sounds vinyl reissue series utilizes the skills of top mastering engineers and the unsurpassed production craft of Quality Record Pressings. All titles are mastered from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and packaged by Stoughton Printing Co. in high-quality gatefold sleeves with tip-on jackets.

Some of the buzz about this superb recording perpetuates the canard that Ella could be emotionally aloof, and that this intimate arrangement, with solo piano as the only accompaniment and unusually close vocal miking, is an antidote to that notion. But her extraordinarily precise technique never displaced her dramatic intuition, although this astonishingly vivid recording certainly places a magnifying glass on that ability. Among the standards here, 'Misty' and 'One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)' are both delivered with exquisite poise and a magical sense for dramatic pacing.