We are very pleased to present Ella Fitzgerald charts as written by Bill Doggett, a very unique figure of the American music scene. During his long career, he had seminal roles in the growth of rhythm and blues and rock and roll, he helped popularize the use of the organ as a small band instrument in popular music, and he also had his hand in the careers of some of jazz's greats as well.

Born in Philadelphia in 1916 to a family that loved music, he followed his mother to the piano; she was a regular player in her church. He soon displayed serious aptitude, and like others who would later achieve great success, he began arranging songs during his high school days, in his case for the school's dance band by his mid-teens. He continued to perform regularly and gain experience throughout the remainder of his teenage years; Philadelphia has long boasted a rich musical history across many genres.

While in his early 20s, Doggett worked extensively with bandleader Lucky Millender, quickly becoming comfortable working in different musical styles; this would serve him well throughout his long career. He also worked with the Ink Spots in the early 1940s. The Ink Spots' vocal-oriented pop was highly successful and influential before the era of rock had begun. During this time Doggett remained primarily a sideman pianist and arranger, eventually joining Louis Jordan's band and playing on the important hit 'Saturday Night Fish Fry.' It's said that his 1951 session with Ella Fitzgerald was his debut as an organist.

In the early 1950s, Doggett put together his own organ trio, and began what would be a highly successful career as a small group leader. He was a pioneer of the rock and roll era as well as the organ-led trio; he charted songs into the early 1960s. His biggest success was 1956's 'Honky Tonk,' which sold millions of copies, reached #2 on the charts, and became a standard of early rock and roll.

It's safe to say that by 1962, Bill Doggett and Ella Fitzgerald had reached very powerful and prominent places in their respective worlds. Ella was an international star of American music; from her modest beginnings to her wowing the music scene with Chick Webb to her graduation to the highest echelon of vocal stars via her Song Book series of albums with Norma Granz's Verve Records, she had reached a rarefied position indeed. At this point, she and Granz wanted to take her back to something a bit less polished, and sought out "a band of studio killers, and arrangements that all but lift off the ground." She found this with a band that included Ernie Royal, Joe Wilder, Melba Liston, Kai Winding, Britt Woodman, Phil Woods, Jerry Dodgion, Hank Jones, Mundell Lowe, and more-and with arrangements by Bill Doggett, who had assembled the group.

The two were no strangers; Doggett had worked with Ella in clubs and on radio performances in the mid-1940s, and first appeared on organ with her in one of the sessions they worked at the beginning of the 1950s. They clearly worked well together in various settings, and Ella was surely aware of Doggett's increasingly long list of impressive credits and successes. In a highly informative and valuable JazzWax article by Marc Myers in All About Jazz, he cites Stuart Nicholson's biography of Ella with comments from Doggett, and this is worth quoting at length: "In early 1962, (Bill Doggett) received a call from Norman Granz: 'Ella would like you to arrange and conduct an album for her,' Granz said. 'Do you think you can do it?' I said, 'Just send me the list of tunes and the keys, and I'll do it!' I had the pleasure of choosing the musicians on the session, and I got the best around...The sessions went just great. I had played my ideas for her before and asked her, 'What about your ideas?' She said, 'You bring the arrangements, and I'll sing them.' That's exactly what happened...We'd play the arrangement down at the session, she'd sing along with it, then say, 'Fine, let's make it!' Any little nuances she did were right there and then, right on the money. She was quick as a wink!"

The result was Rhythm is My Business, and it is indeed something else-the band absolutely shreds, to use more modern terminology, and Ella simultaneously swings so joyously, so easily, and so hard. Clearly, she and Doggett had a fabulous music rapport. During this era, Ella also worked with Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Quincy Jones, Marty Paich, Russ Garcia, Ernie Wilkins--many of the greatest arrangers of all time--so it is easy to see why she never was able to schedule another record with Doggett, but this excellent pairing did leave behind one very solid document of what they were capable of as a unit. Doggett continued to lead bands, record, and tour into the 1990s, appearing in Europe frequently. His last recording of original material was in 1991, and over the decades he recorded swing and R&B, blues and bossa nova, holiday music, and so much more.

He passed away on Nov. 13, 1996 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was 80.

Starting out with Millender, working with the Ink Spots and Jordan, and later with figures as diverse as Jimmy Mundy, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, and Ella Fitzgerald among others, Doggett spent decades honing his considerable skills. He used his innate abilities to absorb as much as he could from all of the various styles his unusually wide array of associates practiced and mastered.

While he effortlessly weaved from genre to genre, Doggett's most important era was the 1950s, when he rode the early waves of R&B and rock and roll as a pioneering innovator, showing the capability of an organ trio led by a stylistic wizard such as himself, contributing greatly to the early repertoire of both of these branches of quintessential American music.