Porgy and Bess (Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong album)

Porgy and Bess is a 1957 studio album by the Jazz vocalist and trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and the Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald collaborating on this recording of selections from George and Ira Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

This album is considered the most musically successful of the jazz vocal versions of the opera, released to coincide with the 1959 movie version.

The arranger on this album, Russell Garcia had previously arranged the first jazz vocal recording of the album, 1956's, The Complete Porgy and Bess.

Reception

The Allmusic, music of the album claimed "What's really great about the Ella and Louis version is Ella, who handles each aria with disarming delicacy, clarion intensity, or usually a blend of both... Pops sounds like he really savored each duet, and his trumpet work — not a whole lot of it, because this is not a trumpeter's opera — is characteristically good as gold. This marvelous album stands quite well on its own, but will sound best when matched with the Ray Charles/Cleo Laine version, especially the songs of the Crab Man, of Peter the Honey Man, and his wife, Lily the Strawberry Woman."

Track listing

For the LP originally released on the Verve label in...
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