Julie London - Cry Me a River

Sarah Vaughan - Summertime (composed by George Gershwin)

Ella Fitzgerald - Round Midnight (live)

Anita O’Day - Sing Sing Sing

“Singers have an unusual relationship with the rest of the music scene. They’re often stereotyped as knowing less about music than anybody else in the band. (The old joke goes: How do you know when a singer is ringing your doorbell? When she doesn’t know when to come in.) Anita O’Day challenged this kind of thinking.

[In the early 1940s], “chirps,” as they were affectionately if condescendingly named, were essentially a kind of window dressing for a big band. O’Day was one of the first band singers to declare emphatically that she was, in fact, a genuine musician, a real soloist…In O’Day’s music the emphasis isn’t on voice or melody, it’s about taking a song and styling it: swinging it, improvising on it.”

-Will Friedwald, “A Singing Affair”, The Wall Street Journal

(via)

Miles Davis - ‘Round Midnight

Django Reinhardt - I’ll See You In My Dreams

Benny Goodman Orchestra - If I Had You

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane- In a Sentimental Mood

Billie Holiday - (In My) Solitude

Etta James - Willow Weep For Me

Louis Armstrong - I’m In The Mood For Love