The Last Decca Years 1949-1954

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.