50,000 stars

This is one of Ella's very best (if no THE best) albums. Heck, it's one of the best vocal jazz albums *period.* It's just Ella and a small group, but it will blow you away. I recommend it to everyone, and it makes a great first choice for those just now looking into the First Lady of Song. Every track is choice, but "Night In Tunisa," "'Round Midnight," "Jersey Bounce," and "Music Goes Round and Around" stand out. The best song is "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." It's the best rendition of that song by anyone anywhere. :-D

Brava Ella!

I like very much this cd. Especially there are three song i love the most: Cry me a river, good morning heartache, and a night in tunisia.

In the whole disc you can appreciate Ella's way of interpreting .....her voice is simply pure and clean in other words perfect.

Do buy this disc..definitly!

Pure Magic

This is probably my favorite Ella CD. Recorded in her prime--the early 1960s--it eschews the overlush arrangements and unembellished singing of her "Songbook" period and returns to her swing roots. This time she chooses a small combo of top-notch musicians and takes an attitude that's at once more intense and more playful than before, steering a course between the score-bound style of the mid-50s and the showy scat singing that made her famous in the 40s. Here the singing is very tender and contains the most tasteful, imaginative, and beautiful ornaments & phrasings I've ever heard in jazz singing--listen, for example, to the haunting last bars of "Round Midnight" and see if the hairs of your arms don't rise. What's even more notable is the large number of bop standards and slow ballads on this album. It's all wonderful, but I would name "Night in Tunisia," "Round Midnight," "Cry Me A River," "Good Morning, Heartache," and "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" as my favorite tracks.

Also highly recommended are "Ella in Berlin" and "Ella in Rome," both recorded during the same period (late 1950s, early 1960s) with small combos.