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Ella In Berlin

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Ella in Berlin

23/04/2013

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Ella In Berlin

Cleveland Watkiss and Dame Cleo marvel at Ella Fitzgerald's Mac the Knife and give it a go

Dame Cleo Laine and Cleveland Watkiss marvel at Ella Fitzgerald's 1960 recording of Mac the Knife and give it a go. From 2013.

Jazz singers Cleveland Watkiss and Dame Cleo Laine listen to Ella Fitzgerald's Mac the Knife, when she forgot the words in Berlin on 13 February 1960, and then have a go themselves.

For post-war Germany jazz, which had been banned under Hitler, was the music of freedom. 

When Norman Granz first brought his Jazz at the Philharmonic tours to Europe in the 1950s, Germans flocked to the concerts and Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald were soon firm favourites.

In February 1960, the German part of the tour opened in Berlin. Mac the Knife, from Brecht's Threepenny Opera, had been a number one for Bobby Darin for nine weeks the previous year, and Ella's friend Louis Armstrong had a hit with it in 1956. But Ella had never sung it. As a tribute to the people of Berlin, she decided she would. She did, but not the version they knew. Yet it was this improvisation that would win her two Grammy awards.

Cleveland Watkiss, for whom Ella Fitzgerald has always been an inspiration, explores her virtuoso improvisation and scat-singing, in the company of another virtuoso performer, Dame Cleo Laine. 

They hear from people who were there that night in the Deutschlandhalle, including tour manager, Fritz Rau, pianist Paul Smith and guitarist Jim Hall, and from the author of a cultural biography of Ella Fitzgerald, Judith Tick.

Award-winning Cleveland Watkiss has a life-long passion for Cleo Laine and finally had the opportunity to meet - and sing with - her in the course of making this programme!

Producer: Marya Burgess

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2013.

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