Tommy Flanagan's Superb "Lady Be Good ... For Ella"

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.