Ella Fitzgerald
didn't lack for live recording opportunities in the late '50s, which on the surface, would make this first issue of a 1958 Chicago live club date an easy one to pass on.
Verve
label head
Norman Granz
recorded her often in the '50s with an eye to releasing live albums, which he did with her shows at
Newport
in 1957 and
Los Angeles' Opera House
in 1958 (not to mention another 1958 concert in Rome that was released 30 years later to wide acclaim). Those shows, however, differed widely from this one, which found her in front of a very small audience at Chicago's
jazz
Mecca
Mister Kelly's
(
Sarah Vaughan
's landmark
At Mister Kelly's
was recorded there four months earlier).
Fitzgerald
's artistry is basically a given in this situation, but much of the material recorded here was rare and obscure;
"Your Red Wagon"
had only been released as a single, her delightfully melodic
"Across the Alley from the Alamo"
never appeared elsewhere, and for a pair of
Sinatra
evergreens --
"In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning"
and
"Witchcraft"
-- the former had never appeared, and the latter only appeared later, on a 1961 return to the site of her Berlin live landmark. ~ John Bush