“I nev­er knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzger­ald sing them.” — Ira Gersh­win

No one ever gave Ella Fitzger­ald faint praise. We could point to cuts from near­ly any one of her over 200 albums as evi­dence for why she is the undis­put­ed “Queen of Jazz,” a title for which she worked hard in her near­ly 60-year career. But she’s bet­ter known by anoth­er name, “The First Lady of Song,” for defin­i­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of Cole Porter, Duke Elling­ton, Irv­ing Berlin, and, of course, George and Ira Gersh­win. Fitzger­ald’s record­ings of their songs played “an essen­tial role in the broad­er trans­for­ma­tion of the Gersh­win’s music from show tunes to Amer­i­can Song­book stan­dards,” writes the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan’s Gersh­win Ini­tia­tive.

What’s fas­ci­nat­ing about that trans­for­ma­tion is the way in which Fitzger­ald’s ren­di­tions of pop­u­lar songs ele­vat­ed them to eter­nal main­stream sta­tus by draw­ing on the rhyth­mic and melod­ic resources of jazz, a dis­tinct­ly Black Amer­i­can music some­times cast as a threat to the U.S. estab­lish­ment when Fitzger­ald began her career. (We need look no fur­ther than the vicious per­se­cu­tion of Bil­lie Hol­i­day by the coun­try’s first drug czar, Hen­ry Anslinger, as case in point.) Amer­i­ca may not always have been eager to embrace Fitzger­ald, but she was hap­py nonethe­less to gift the coun­try its great­est music.

Fitzger­ald’s 5‑LP set of Gersh­win songs, pro­duced by Nor­man Granz in 1959, con­tin­ues to be “the most ambi­tious of the cel­e­brat­ed song books record­ed by Ella,” Jazz Mes­sen­gers writes, “and one of the best vocal jazz albums ever made.” Record­ed two years ear­li­er by Granz in Los Ange­les, her Por­gy and Bess with Louis Arm­strong “remains one of the true gems in jazz his­to­ry.” Fitzger­ald’s voice is unpar­al­leled. She could do almost any­thing with it, from reach­ing down low to imi­tate Arm­strong’s growl to break­ing a glass with her high C for a Mem­o­rex ad twen­ty years lat­er.

Dizzy Gille­spie once said that Fitzger­ald could sing back any­thing he played for her, and she cit­ed horns as her pri­ma­ry vocal inspi­ra­tion. “She sang like an instru­ment,” says pianist Bil­ly Tay­lor, who played with her in the 1940s, “like a clar­inet or like a trom­bone or like a what­ev­er.” The irony, of course, is that horns and many oth­er melod­ic instru­ments achieved their tim­bre by try­ing to imi­tate the human voice. Fitzger­ald had the orig­i­nal; she need­ed no accom­pa­ni­ment — she was the music, with “impec­ca­ble tim­ing and per­fect pitch,” NPR writes. “In fact, band musi­cians said they would tune up to her voice.”

In the video at the top from a per­for­mance in Berlin in 1968, you can see Fitzger­ald “destroy” the har­mon­ic minor scale, as the YouTube uploader puts it, while pianist Tee Car­son looks on in awe. The song, from Por­gy and Bess (see the full per­for­mance fur­ther up), is just one of many writ­ten by the Gersh­wins that “tran­scends its musi­cal the­atre ori­gins” due to Fitzger­ald’s impro­visato­ry bril­liance and musi­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Just above, you can hear that live vocal track stripped of instru­men­ta­tion except Ella’s voice in a Wings of Pega­sus analy­sis video of the “depth of her expres­sion” and vocal per­fec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ella Fitzgerald’s Lost Inter­view about Racism & Seg­re­ga­tion: Record­ed in 1963, It’s Nev­er Been Heard Until Now

How Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Helped Break Ella Fitzger­ald Into the Big Time (1955)

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you fol­low music news, or just scan enter­tain­ment head­lines, you might have noticed that a few weeks after his death, beloved Foo Fight­ers’ drum­mer Tay­lor Hawkins’ final days became a con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject. Accord­ing to a Rolling Stone arti­cle quot­ing Pearl Jam drum­mer Matt Cameron and Red Hot Chili Pep­pers drum­mer Chad Smith, Hawkins was exhaust­ed by the Foo Fight­ers’ tour­ing sched­ule. He need­ed a break, and he did­n’t get one. Both drum­mers have issued state­ments dis­avow­ing the arti­cle. Mean­while, as GQ not­ed, a Rolling Stone “Insta­gram post high­light­ing the arti­cle is being slammed by crit­i­cal fans in the com­ments.”

Argu­ing over hearsay about a musi­cian’s state of mind before his death seems like a poor way to remem­ber him soon after he’s gone. If you’d rather steer clear of this scene, the orig­i­nal Rolling Stone piece is still worth check­ing out for its intro­duc­tion: a feel­go­od sto­ry from three days before Hawkins, 50, was found in his Bogotá hotel room.

After Foo Fight­ers can­celed a head­lin­ing con­cert in Asun­ción, the cap­i­tal city of Paraguay, due to weath­er, Hawkins end­ed up hang­ing out with nine-year-old drum­mer Emma Sofía Per­al­ta out­side the Sher­a­ton. She’d brought her drum kit and played for him. He posed for a pho­to with her, “crouch­ing next to her and flash­ing the sort of warm, toothy smile that estab­lished him as one of the most beloved drum­mers in rock.”

More details of Hawkins’ death may become pub­lic, or they may not. But they should­n’t obscure the rea­son he was famous in life. Like every­one else in the band, but most espe­cial­ly his “twin” Dave Grohl, Hawkins always looked like he was hav­ing the time of his life, whether onstage or meet­ing fans. The band won mass devo­tion not only through stel­lar song­writ­ing and per­for­mances but through sheer, unbri­dled enthu­si­asm: the kind of spir­it that drove 1000 musi­cians to stage a con­cert cov­er­ing “Learn to Fly” in 2015, in a bid to bring the Foo Fight­ers to the town of Cese­na, Italy. It worked, and thus was born the Rockin’ 1000 con­cept.

Get­ting a hand­ful of rock musi­cians to show up on time is a feat in itself, much less 1000 of them, all play­ing not only on time but in time as well. Rockin’ 1000 has pulled this off con­sis­tent­ly since they start­ed, and their trib­ute above to Hawkins above is no dif­fer­ent — a sta­di­um-sized cov­er ver­sion of “My Hero” that con­veys all the emo­tion of the orig­i­nal while mul­ti­ply­ing it by the ampli­tude of a hun­dred march­ing bands. A fit­ting remem­brance of what Hawkins meant to his fans if ever there was one.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Foo Fight­ers’ Tay­lor Hawkins (RIP) Give a Drum­ming Mas­ter­class

Watch 1,000 Musi­cians Play the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Dave Grohl Falls Off­stage & Breaks His Leg, Then Con­tin­ues the Show as The Foo Fight­ers Play Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (2015)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Grant­ed a wish to trav­el back in time, many a Bach lover would leap to Thuringia, in a pre-uni­fied Ger­many, cir­ca the ear­ly 1700s, or to Arn­stadt, Mühlhausen, the courts of Weimar and Köthen, or Leipzig. There, Bach com­posed his con­cer­tos, suites, fugues, pre­ludes, canons, chorales, organ works, solo pieces, as well as unique works like the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions and The Well-Tem­pered Clavier. He wrote prin­ci­pal­ly for church­es and sov­er­eigns who had his music per­formed in what we now call its orig­i­nal set­tings.

Of course, we can’t hear Bach’s Baroque mas­ter­works the way his con­tem­po­raries did, though we can try. But imag­ine stand­ing in St. Paul’s Church, hear­ing the com­pos­er play his organ works him­self in the ear­ly 1720s. (Built in 1231, the church sur­vived WWII, only to be demol­ished for rede­vel­op­ment under the East Ger­man regime in 1968.) Imag­ine hear­ing Bach’s cham­ber works played in the ornate cham­bers of the 18th cen­tu­ry. It’s a nice dream, but I think we’re for­tu­nate to live in his dis­tant future, and to have expe­ri­enced his music through three-hun­dred years of inter­pre­ta­tions, new arrange­ments and instru­men­ta­tion, and thou­sands of record­ings.

Bach might bare­ly rec­og­nize the way some of his works have been inter­pret­ed. He might object to beloved, yet unortho­dox record­ings by Glenn Gould and Wendy Car­los. He might abhor the notion of record­ing alto­geth­er. Who knows. But the music is no longer his. As Yo Yo Ma has tried to show in his life’s work, Bach belongs to every­one. The Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety shares this belief, and has endeav­ored to upload live per­for­mances of “All of Bach” to their web­site and YouTube. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to see Bach’s works per­formed live in Ams­ter­dam, view­able from any­where at any time, would seem like dev­il­ry to those in Bach’s day.

“Since the start of this unique project,” writes the Soci­ety, “more than 350 of the total of 1080 works by Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach have been per­formed and record­ed in spe­cial ways” in this attempt to “share Bach’s music with the whole world” through “excel­lent audio visu­al record­ings of the high­est qual­i­ty.” These per­for­mances include set­tings very like the orig­i­nals, if very far away in time: “Can­tatas are filmed in a church, for instance, and cham­ber music at the musi­cian’s homes.” They also include high­lights such as the Six Cel­lo Suites at the Rijksmu­se­um and Bran­den­burg Con­cert no. 4 at Felix Mari­tis.

See high­light­ed per­for­mances here and just above, watch new­ly-added (as of Feb­ru­ary) per­for­mances of The Well-Tem­pered Clavier, “48 key­board pieces in all 24 keys,” the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety notes, “the sort of chal­lenge Bach enjoyed.” This is the com­pos­er at his freest — “In con­trast to the iron dis­ci­pline Bach had to apply to his church com­po­si­tions, here he could aban­don him­self to Intel­lec­tu­al Spiel­erei with­out wor­ry­ing about dead­lines.” Help the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety con­tin­ue their ambi­tious project with a dona­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

Hear J.S. Bach’s Music Per­formed on the Laut­en­wer­ck, Bach’s Favorite Lost Baroque Instru­ment

Bach Played Beau­ti­ful­ly on the Baroque Lute, by Pre­em­i­nent Lutenist Evan­geli­na Mas­car­di

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

By now, you’re famil­iar with “Play­ing for Change,” a mul­ti­me­dia music project that brings togeth­er musi­cians and singers from across the globe–some well known, many oth­ers not. Their lat­est video fea­tures Car­los San­tana play­ing “Oye Como Va,” a song he made famous in 1970. He’s joined by Cindy Black­man, Tito Puente, Jr. (whose father wrote the song in 1963), bassist Tal Wilken­feld, Rubén Rada and musi­cians from Colom­bia, Pana­ma, Uruguay, the Con­go, Brazil, and beyond. For more Play­ing for Change videos, see the Relat­eds below. The one fea­tur­ing John Paul Jones per­form­ing “When The Lev­ee Breaks” is a per­son­al favorite.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

“When The Lev­ee Breaks” Per­formed by John Paul Jones & Musi­cians Around the World

“Stand By Me” Sung By Musi­cians Around the World

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr