Patti Austin is well qualified to record an album in the style of
Ella Fitzgerald, having spent her career shadowing the paths taken by
Fitzgerald and her contemporaries. Although she has worked in R&B-oriented adult pop much of the time, she is clearly in the tradition of
Fitzgerald, and in 1988 she even recorded an album of standards that she tellingly titled
The Real Me.
For Ella easily could be the sequel to that collection.
Austin traveled to Köln, Germany, to record a program of songs associated with
Fitzgerald with
the WDR Big Band conducted by
Patrick Williams. Many of the songs, of course, are just ones
Fitzgerald happened to sing but that have broader associations as well, such as
George & Ira Gershwin's "Our Love Is Here to Stay" and "The Man I Love," though others, such as "A Tisket a Tasket," inevitably evoke
Fitzgerald.
Austin does not, for the most part, attempt to sing in
Fitzgerald's style, giving listeners her own interpretations that, in
Williams' neo-swing arrangements, nevertheless hark back to the 1950s. That's fine for the most part, though the version of "Miss Otis Regrets," which treats it as a gospel performance in the manner of
Mahalia Jackson, without the slightest touch of humor, is a misstep. On two occasions,
Austin does copy
Fitzgerald, re-creating the scat sections of "You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)" and "How High the Moon." That obviates the problem of having to compete with
Fitzgerald on her greatest improvisational triumphs, but it's a technical achievement of an odd sort.
Austin is better off putting her own stamp on the songs; that she does very well. ~ William Ruhlmann