JAZZ REVIEW : Fitzgerald Interprets Essence of Song at Hollywood Bowl

During the Ella Fitzgerald concert Wednesday evening at the Hollywood Bowl, guitarist Joe Pass played Harold Arlen’s “My Shining Hour.” It could have been the theme song for the entire evening. Shining hours for Fitzgerald, for Pass, and for the 17,941 Fitzgerald faithful.

Yes, she moved slowly, helped by the arm of her pianist Mike Wofford, and yes, she sang seated on a high stool, but, once in place, her performance called for no comparisons and no apologies.

This elegant, gracious lady, who made her first record in 1935 with Chick Webb’s band, has retained the qualities that established her more than half a century ago as the definitive jazz and pop singer.

Her jazz credentials were promptly evidenced as she opened with her sublimation of a trivial 1930s ditty, “Goody Goody.” There was also her wordless version of the “Sanford & Son” theme, and a cheerful be-bop runaround on “Lemon Drop.”

As an interpreter of ballads and pop standards, she brings out all the melodic and lyrical essence in “Get Out of Town” (with subliminal help from Wofford) for a bilingual treatment of “Agua de Beber.” Her range is unimpaired; she can still swoop through two octaves (downward or upward) within an eight-bar stanza.

It has been suggested that Fitzgerald’s talent stops short of the blues, yet in “Alright, Okay, You Win” and her long workout on “St. Louis Blues,” she made it clear that no idiom is a foreign territory to her. From Cole Porter to Charlie Parker, she has been there and back.

Emotionally, she surprised now and then. At one point in “Good Morning Heartache,” she almost shouted the title phrase, bringing to it the exact mix of anger and resignation the lyric calls for.

Wofford’s trio offered the ideal setting, with bassist Keter Betts (her sideman since the 1960s) and the discreetly sympathetic drummer Bobby Durham.

Pass, a frequent Fitzgerald partner, is the ultimate guitar virtuoso, swinging implacably on “It’s a Wonderful World” and investing “Summertime” with shifts of mood, key and tempo. His brief solo set was followed by a few duo numbers with Fitzgerald that brought the evening to a peak of spontaneity.