Ella Fitzgerald

LIVE IN EAST BERLIN 1967

“Ella Fitzgerald – As in the good old days at the Savoy!”

It all began with a coincidence and complicity between Ronald Trisch, the head of the East German music agency, and Horst Lippmann, the West Berlin representative of major American artists.

In January 1967, Ella Fitzgerald was on a European tour with Duke Ellington and his orchestra. After a concert in West Berlin, January 25 was a day off. They jumped at the chance to organize a somewhat adventurous "detour" for Ella to East Berlin. At 11 p.m. on Wednesday evening, 3,000 people flocked to the Friedrichstadt Palace. This appearance in East Berlin would be the only one of her career. No big orchestra behind her, but the 3 exceptional musicians of the Jimmy Jones Trio to accompany her.

This was a perilous affair. Karlheinz Drechsel, one of the organizers, and father of Ulf Drechsel, our correspondent in Germany, describes in his Memoirs, an excessively nervous Ella when, after crossing Check Point Charlie, she finds herself backstage. Unusual anxieties haunt her thoughts: this concert is not like the others, she hasn't had enough time to rehearse, what will the audience think, what do they expect of her, will she be able to seduce them? No one can calm her down, and she fidgets with her eternal white handkerchief. These thoughts run through her mind as her manager, Norman Granz, enters the stage and introduces the musicians: Sam Woodyard on drums, Bob Cranshow on double bass, Jimmy Jones on piano, then settles for a simple "I think you all know Ella". She enters, murmurs a timid "danke schön" and, miraculously, the audience greets her with a thunderous cheer. In less than a breath, the strained smile that marked her lips is transformed into happy laughter. The "First Lady of Jazz" emerges from her torpor. She was about to deliver one of her most memorable concerts to the East Berlin public.

The Lost Recordings managed to obtain the original analog tapes of this unique performance, one in stereo and one in mono. Neither version was complete. The concert had to be reconstructed, and the version of each track that most perfectly revealed the magic of the moment had to be chosen prior to the restoration work.

For almost an hour and a half, she treated the audience to some twenty tracks from the other side of the wall, alternating timeless standards with the hits of the moment, from the Beatles to Nancy Sinatra...

It's now one o'clock in the morning. The concert should be over. But the ovation is immense. The audience doesn't want to let Ella go. She returns to give an encore of her childhood song "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" and a climax in the form of "Hello, Dolly!".

Late that night, before getting back into her car, heading for West Berlin, exhausted but drunk with happiness, she confesses to Karlheinz Drechsel: "It was just like the good old days at the Savoy! ".