Verve began with Ella. For Ella. The label consolidated what its founder Norman Ganz knew when he set it up at the end of 1955 – that Ella Fitzgerald was a superstar with a voice that could sing the songbook, the phone book, and get the world double taking. In early 1956, he took out a full-page ad in Billboard – ‘VERVE RECORDS – WE GOT ELLA’ – and began galvanising a roster of female jazz vocalists whose names would go down in history, forever linked to protest songs, torch songs, songs that made your heart melt or made you raise a clenched fist. 

That Verve swiftly became one of the go-to labels for jazz and popular music was a boon to the civil rights activism of Ganz, for whom racial segregation was anathema. If your venue wanted Fitzgerald, he stipulated, it was desegregated audiences or nothing. Ganz’s maverick status dovetailed with that of his signees. His instinct for spotting talent (female and otherwise) with longevity and smarts felt preternatural. 

Here are ten of the greatest Verve albums headlined by women.

1. Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook (1956)

The first of Fitzgerald’s eight album songbook collection, this studio double album became one of the best-selling albums of 1956. Accompanied by a studio orchestra helmed by Buddy Bregman, then head of A&R at Verve, Fitzgerald delivers across 32 Porter originals. It’s all here, from ‘Miss Otis Regrets’, a song about the lynching of a socialite who murders her cheating lover, to ear worms including ‘Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love’ and ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’. “My, what marvellous diction that girl has,” Porter allegedly remarked of an album that would be enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

2. Billie Holiday – The Lady Sings the Blues (1956)

Originally released on Clef Records, the Granz-owned label absorbed into Verve, this classic was one of Holiday’s final albums, released as a companion piece to her autobiography of the same name. Taken from two separate recording sessions with musicians including guitarist Kenny Burrell and pianist Wynton Kelly, Holiday’s final album features re-recordings of the civil rights anthem ‘Strange Fruit’, the achingly beautiful ‘God Bless the Child’, co-written with Arthur Herzog Jr following an argument Holiday had with her mother – and four new songs including the title track. Holiday passed away three years later, aged 44.

3. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – Ella and Louis (1956)

It wasn’t the first time they’d collaborated. But Ella and Louis became a landmark jazz recording for its deft capturing of two of the genre’s most distinctive voices, magnificently backed by an ensemble – Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Buddy Rich – schooled in the art of restraint. Equally vital is producer Norman Granz, whose thoughtful song selection and sequencing (‘Tenderly’, ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’, ‘Cheek to Cheek’) provide remarkable coherence and emotional flow. An album that defined the vocal jazz standard for generations. 

4. Anita O’Day – Anita Sings the Most (1958) 

Anita O’Day was a big band aficionado who considered her voice simply another instrument – albeit an instrument with rhythmic invention, impeccable phrasing and spot-on timing – when head of A&R, Buddy Bregman signed her to Verve. The label released 13 studio albums by O’Day between 1956 and 1964, teaming her with the likes of composer/trumpeter Billy May and Latin jazz cat Cal Tjader; on this, her fourth release, she scats and swings alongside the Oscar Peterson Quartet. Tunes such as ‘Them There Eyes’ zip along, O’Day keeping pace with lightning fingered Peterson, while the slo-mo beauty of Rogers and Hart’s ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ underscores her range.

5. Dinah Washington – What A Diff’rence a Day Makes (1959)

The album that turned renowned jazz/blues singer Dinah Washington into a mainstream sensation. The setting – lush strings, mellow brass and a rhythm section owning the poppy arrangements – is a romantic compliment to those soulful vocals. The swoonsome title track – an English language version of the Spanish song ‘Cuando vuelva a tu lado’ that was famously recorded in one take – variously earned Washington her first Top Ten hit, won her a Grammy and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. 

6. Astrud Gilberto – The Astrud Gilberto Album (1965)

There was always more to the Rio-raised Astrud Gilberto than ‘The Girl from Ipanema’, the tune she recorded – a music biz ingenue – in 1964 as a duet with her then husband, João Gilberto, during the recording of the jazz classic Getz/Gilberto. Gilberto would go on to release 16 studio albums sung in a variety of languages. But this debut solo recording featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim on guitar remains a bossa nova classic, an exemplar of Sixties lounge-jazz. Listen to Gilberto softly croon Jobim’s oh-so-charming ‘Dindi’, or ‘Agua de Beber’ with its melodic flow and lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes and (in English) Norman Gimbel and see what we mean.

7. Shirley Horn – I Thought About You – Live at Vine St (1987)

Was she a pianist who sang? A singer who played piano? Whatever she was – and as this comeback album, her first in 20 years, shows – she was fabulous. Immaculately performed alongside bass and drums as if she’d never been away, Shirley Horn took the stage at this Hollywood supper club and delivered eleven standards with the unhurried languor that was her trademark. Her skill as a balladeer is evident on a 12-minute rendering of Jobim’s ‘Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars’. Rogers and Hart’s ‘Isn’t It Romantic’ is here as an instrumental.

8. Betty Carter – Droppin’ Things (1990)

Hailed for her bold vocal improvisations and technically exact, hyper energetic delivery, Betty Carter was at the height of her powers when she played the Bottom Line in New York City and held the crowd spellbound. Featuring Geri Allen on piano and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, this Grammy-nominated set reaffirms Carter’s out-of-the-box talent. Audacious, free and bebop-tastic, the way Carter ramps up the pace – allegedly using hand signals to guide changes in tone and tempo – to frenzied complexity is breathtaking. Signature showstopper ‘Open the Door’ is here, and the tongue-in-cheek ‘Why Him’. 

9. Diana Krall – The Look of Love (2001)

Having grown up playing classical piano and singing in her church choir, Canadian jazz musician Dianna Krall already had a Grammy and worldwide acclaim when she gifted this fifth studio album – a polished collection of Songbook gems – to the world. Grammy-winning, platinum selling, boasting luxurious orchestral arrangements by Claus Ogerman, and the London Symphony Orchestra, The Look of Love confirmed Krall’s superstar status. The bossa-nova inspired title track with its sultry vocals and expressive piano would come to define her artistry. 

10. Samara Joy: Portrait (2024) 

Where her first two albums reinvigorated the Great American Songbook, Portrait is Joy’s most liberated and experimental recording, a project – her second Verve release – that marks an artist coming into her own. Highlights are many: a vocal adaptation of Charles Mingus’ ‘Reincarnation of a Songbird’ with lyrics and a stunning a capella intro by Joy. Jobim’s ‘No More Blues’, and the ’40s standard ‘Autumn Nocturne’, and originals by members of a new touring band cherry-picked for their creative skills. The sky-high standard never dips.

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Jane Cornwell is an Australian-born, London-based writer on arts, travel and music for publications and platforms in the UK and Australia, including Songlines and Jazzwise. She’s the former jazz critic of the London Evening Standard.

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