Ella Fitzgerald: The Moment of Truth: Ella at the Coliseum

2025

Ella Fitzgerald virtually invented the live album. The reason is simple: her performances were so consistently great that almost any live show was special enough to release as a record. In a sense, for Ella Fitzgerald, every night was The Moment of Truth. But this previously unknown concert stands out from the pack. In the summer of 1967 Ella Fitzgerald was in a particularly interesting place. She was in the middle of an especially rewarding three-year touring and recording collaboration with Duke Ellington and was incorporating hit pop songs of the late-60s into her concert repertoire—two of which are presented here for the first time on record.

Tapes were unearthed in the private tape collection of Verve Records founder Norman Granz - mixed directly from 4-track tapes recorded by Wally Heider - resulting in higher-fidelity audio than most ‘lost’ recordings. This album Includes the first Ella recordings of the hit songs “Alfie” and “Music to Watch Girls By” and her band features the rarely-heard but hard-swinging trio of Jimmy Jones, Bob Cranshaw and Sam Woodyard. The Ellington band captured here was at its peak, featuring Cat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope.