I'm very embarrassed that I neglected Ella's 100th birthday yesterday. Above Sinatra, above Crosby, she's undoubtedly the greatest interpreter of American popular music. Her "songbook" albums of the great American composers - Porter, Rogers & Hart, Elington, Berlin, Gershwin, Arlen, Kern, and Mercer - took about nine years to complete and are staggering in the number of great tracks they contain. She fronted a major band as a teenager, was a star by her early twenties, and her voice remained stunningly good until her general health started failing when she was in her sixties.

I can load over 400 Ella Fitzgerald songs on an iPod, and there are days when I just listen to her all day. Why listen to anyone else?