JAZZ REVIEW : Not to Worry . . . Ella Is Still Ella

An element of curiosity pervaded the Hollywood Bowl Wednesday evening, when Ella Fitzgerald made her first appearance since the widely publicized collapse and cancellation of dates during the European tour.

Was she really well enough to go back to work? How had the illness affected her? The answer took a little while, since Benny Carter’s orchestra played a 35-minute opening set. Even then her presence was felt when Carter offered an ingenious version of “Lady Be Good” based mainly on Ella’s famous recorded improvisations. (Later, Ella returned the compliment by singing Carter’s tune “And All That Jazz.”)

When Her First Ladyship took to the stage, helped on by Carter and settled on a stool by the piano, all doubts were soon put to rest. The up tempos were buoyantly confident (“Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Honeysuckle Rose”), the ballads only minimally affected by a slight quaver (“Somewhere in the Night,” the old “Naked City” theme), and the blues a commanding reminder of how she deals with this classic idiom (“St. Louis Blues,” with only occasional variations on W.C. Handy’s original 1914 lyrics).

As one singer in the audience commented, “Maybe Ella doesn’t have the range and control she had when she was 25, but she has the style, the class, the phrasing, she swings--and she’s still Ella.”

On the early set she was backed by Carter’s brass and sax sections and her own rhythm section, with the admirable Mike Wofford at the piano, Keter Betts on bass and Bobby Durham on drums. After intermission these three accompanied Carter in a reminder of the alto genius’ dexterity, logic and total purity.

The star then returned, wearing a gown even more attractive than the first one, seemingly more relaxed in the intimate company of her trio. She traded a few words with the audience: “What was that, dear? . . . I love you too.” Cole Porter was well represented with “Night and Day,” “Get Out of Town,” “You Do Something to Me.” Ella flexed her Portuguese in “Agua de Beber” before returning to American Standard Time, with “Body and Soul” and “The Man I Love.”

Once in a while, just as she seemed to be faltering a little, she would suddenly reach up for a note an octave above the one you expected, and hit it right on the button, as if to assure us, “Don’t worry about a thing, folks. I still got it.”

The finale was almost an echo of her old Jazz at the Philharmonic days, as Carter, trombonist Buster Cooper, Don Menza on tenor sax and a surprise guest, Sweets Edison on trumpet, jammed with her as she scatted through the Ray Eldridge tune “Little Jazz.”

In 1950 Ella Fitzgerald had a hit record entitled “Dontcha Go ‘way Mad.” That was one plea she had no need to make Wednesday, when 17,965 fans (as many as you could cram in without a shoe horn) went away in a mood that mixed relief with delight. The living legend lives on.