On the first (of many) entirely sleepless nights, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s soothing, 1956 masterpiece took us to our collective happy place.

*Note, as these reviews roll out, I’ll be adding our favourite tracks from each album to a growing Spotify playlist. Check it out at the bottom!*

I had this plan for how these reviews were going to get set up. Every day, I’d to bring Eleanor down to my stupid little mancave where my records are, and I was going to put the album (vinyl only!) on for us to listen to. We’d share these super bohemian bonding sessions and I’d be able to actually tell from her tiny facial expressions that she really dug the odd time signatures. That she could seriously appreciate the pops and hisses that only vinyl provides. Yeah, about that.

Eleanor is 5 days old, and a tad congested. She doesn’t (yet) sleep for long periods of time, and if she does, it’s during the day on one of us. At night, we’re usually up consoling her.

Instead of the turntable, there was my laptop, and instead of my totally curated (hosed at vinyl shows) record collection, there was Spotify. Up popped Ella & Louis – a testament to humankind having ears.

And so, Eleanor, my wife and I sat together, exhausted and frazzled, and filled our world with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

Some quick notes about Ella & Louis:

• Ella & Louis was the personal pet project of Verve founder Norman Ganz.
• Fitzgerald and Armstrong would perform a list of songs written by (among others) George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.
• The backing was the Oscar Peterson quartet, including drums by Buddy freaking rich.

When I listed all of this off to Eleanor, she seemed indifferent. At best. Turns out, newborns do not care for historical wowfacts. What they do care about is sleeping and eating, and at night, her desire for the latter interrupts the former. The first thing that gave Ella & Louis such immediate impact (then and now) is the collection of classic jazz torch songs like “Cheek to Cheek” and “They Can’t Take that Away from Me”. When we heard those songs, we instinctively sang along, trying of course not to drown out Ella’s perfect inflections. But lucky for us, Eleanor loves it when we sing to her. Actually, nothing against the first lady of song, but Ellie’s reaction to our off-key singing was much more noticeable than when the song was coming through my laptop speakers. Am I suggesting we’re better singers than Ella Fitzgerald? I mean, no? No. Definitely not.

Ella & Louis is placid, soulful, quiet and soothing. It gently guides you to all your beautiful memories, and somehow naturally filters out the lousy ones. It puts you in your happy place. Even songs we were less familiar with like “Moonlight in Vermont” and “Under a Blanket of Blue” sounded as though we’d known them our whole lives, and as shot nerves unravelled and tense shoulders rolled backwards, we noticed an immediate change in Eleanor. I’m not saying a Spotify album stopped my newborn daughter from crying, but I’m also not not saying that.

As will be the case moving forward, I’m not about to pretend that my newborn/infant/toddler daughter has a profound opinion about music either way. What I can do is talk about the experience we had together, and they enhanced (or detracted from) our bond.

That said, I’m giving Ella & Louis five (eventually) sleeping babies out of five.

Spotify Playlist

Well, it’s the first review thus far, but I’m building a Spotify playlist with my favourite tracks from each album Ellie and I enjoyed together. Here it is!