Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's SubStack)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's SubStack)

Articles

  • "Pop! Goes the Ella," Part 1

    1 week ago | willfriedwald.substack.com | Will Friedwald

    One thing, out of many, that Judith Tick - latest and greatest biographer of Ella Fitzgerald - and I agree on is that Fitzgerald deserves more credit for her repertoire choices. We also agree that it was her two major producers - first Milt Gabler, and then, to a much greater extent, Norman Granz - who deserve credit for the Ella Fitzgerald songbook series.

  • Ella Fitzgerald & Nat King Cole Go "Crazy Over Horses!"

    2 weeks ago | willfriedwald.substack.com | Will Friedwald

    Here’s a 150-year-old lick that appears prominently in the “quote library” of both Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald - and, more recently, inspired by both of them, Diana Krall. “Horses” is a 1926 novelty song recorded by the New York-based hot dance orchestra, George Olsen and his Music. The song is credited to Byron Gay (lyrics), who wrote a number of novelty tunes (“The Vamp,” “Four or Five Times”) and Richard Whiting (music) who wrote a lot of everything.

  • "Night of the Living Ed"

    3 weeks ago | willfriedwald.substack.com | Will Friedwald

    When we talk about the great champions of musical and performance culture, we are making a serious omission if we don’t include Ed Sullivan who presented and preserved more great music than virtually anyone in American history. For 22 years he brought us the greatest in American vernacular music, sometimes opera, classical, and world music as well.

  • Nat & Nelson, continued: "Night Lights" & "That's You"

    1 month ago | willfriedwald.substack.com | Will Friedwald

    On January 4th, 1956, the team of Nat King Cole and Nelson Riddle cut a particularly excellent session of singles - six altogether - including two Nat-Nelson masterpieces, “To the Ends of the Earth” and “Never Let Me Go.”“Never Let Me Go” was a classic song by a pair of well-established but still relatively young writers, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. “To the Ends of the Earth” was by the newer team of the brothers Joe and Noel Sherman.

  • "Sunday in the Park with Nat"

    1 month ago | willfriedwald.substack.com | Will Friedwald

    In 1954, Capitol Records released a new ten-inch LP titled Nat King Cole: Unforgettable. This was a compilation of tracks previously released as 78 and 45 RPM singles, which included most of Cole’s hits as a popular crooner, working with orchestras and string sections.

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Will Friedwald

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