Ella Fitzgerald performed a show in Berlin in 1962 but the recording was presumed lost. That is until the tapes were discovered in an archive.
Here’s what Giovanni Russonello thought about it:
On the album, Fitzgerald is in her mid-40s, and well established as popular music royalty. Hear the breadth and depth of her vibrato, the way she uses strong breath to give rhythmic passages a punch, how she reinvents the melody to Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah! I Love Her So” as if her voice were a saxophone with words.
George W. Harris gave it a glowing review for Jazz Weekly:
There is a surfeit of hard hitting and exuberant swing here, something missing from today’s musicians and vocalists. Where did we go wrong?
Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes is now available in stores and various streaming platforms and you can stream it on Spotify.