I consider the albums recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again, and Porgy and Bess) to be some of the most important jazz vocal albums of all time. The playing, the singing, the swinging, the sheer joy of these albums is immeasurable.
I also have long loved Phil Mattson’s classic arrangement of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, which uses Frank Sinatra’s exact phrasing along with some vocal jazz harmonization; it’s a great way to learn phrasing in a vocal group setting.
So I decided this summer to write a vocal group arrangement for Shades of Blue that would aim to do the same thing, but with an Ella and Lous song. I chose “Can’t We Be Friends.” It had the added bonuses, in the virtual times, of having lots of unison and, for remote recording, there was over 1/3 of the chart when each singer didn’t sing (it has a full chorus of S/A – the “Ella” chorus and a full chorus of T/B – the “Louis” chorus). The phrasing was hard to transcribe, and hard to learn, but I think it did it’s job of helping us all get a better sense of exemplary jazz vocal phrasing.
I loved working on this with Shades, and am so pleased with how their virtual recording came out. When we pivoted to in-person in March, this was the first song we worked on, and it was our closer in our May outdoor live concert.
Please enjoy our remote “virtual choir” version of “Can’t We Be Friends!”
Stay tuned for an announcement about a full “virtual concert” from Shades of Blue as well as news about this chart being published!