This afternoon I've been sitting at my desk folding paper and listening to an album called “The Intimate Ella” on which Ella Fitzgerald abandons the snappy jazz and scat that made her famous and renders some old standards low and slow in the purest dulcet tones. She is just way too good.
I couldn’t stop myself from singing along here and there, but then in the middle of “September Song” I stopped suddenly, wondering if maybe it's disrespectful, or pretentious, or blasphemous to sing with Ella Fitzgerald. But I bet she wouldn’t have minded.
It was about twenty years ago now (June 15, 1996, actually) that a co-worker stopped me one morning as I came into the office. "What's the matter?" she asked. "You look sad.”
I replied, “I am. I just heard on the radio that Ella Fitzgerald died.”
“Who’s that?” asked she.
Only slightly exasperated, I answered, “Probably the greatest jazz singer of all time.”
She squinted her eyes slightly, and I could see a light bulb had flipped on somewhere. "Oh," she said, "is she the old black woman with the eyeglasses?”
Uh-huh.
