Ella Fitzgerald's tenure at Decca Records has been criticized, especially in comparison to her subsequent stay at Verve, for the mediocrity of the material she recorded and her late-blooming maturity as a singer. By selecting 20 tracks from among the sessions she did late in her Decca period with arranger/conductor
Sy Oliver, this album makes the best of that era, though the results still do not rank with
Fitzgerald's later triumphs. The punchy
Oliver style, heard in everything from the works of
Jimmie Lunceford to those of
Tommy Dorsey and
Frank Sinatra, has a Dixieland flavor, especially in its blaring horns, that
Fitzgerald seems to find stimulating. But the quality of the material is still the key: when singer and arranger have something like "Basin Street Blues" to work with, they do fine (
Fitzgerald even breaks into her first recorded
Louis Armstrong imitation), and there are enough such examples "I've Got the World on a String," "Angel Eyes," "Blue Lou," and
Fitzgerald's scat showcase "You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)" -- to raise the album to worthwhile status, especially when you throw in a duet session with
Armstrong himself on "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and "Can Anyone Explain?." But there are also many second-rate songs that
Fitzgerald dutifully sings as though they were something better, and that keeps this album from countering the usual impression of the Decca years. ~ William Ruhlmann