One of my all-time favorite jazz albums is Tommy Flanagan’s
1994 Lady Be Good … For Ella, with
Peter Washington on bass and Lewis Nash on drums. Flanagan was a superlative improviser,
who respected the melody even as he spun brilliant variations on it. New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett
said of him, “It is rare to come away from hearing Flanagan without something
new and ingenious” (Night Creature,
1981). Flanagan was Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist from 1968 to 1978. After
that, he went solo (sometimes with bass and drums, or just bass). He died in
2001.
Lady Be Good … For
Ella contains eleven beautiful songs, including a dashing “How High the
Moon,” an exquisite “Angel Eyes,” and two inventive, completely different
versions of Gershwin’s “Oh, Lady Be Good.” The highlight, for me, is Flanagan’s
sparkling performance of an arresting, seldom-heard Sammy Cahn tune called
“Pete Kelly’s Blues.”
Lady Be Good … For Ella is a superb album by a great jazz poet.
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