This was Ella Fitzgerald’s first album for the newly created Verve Records (and the first album to be released by the label.) Fitzgerald’s time on the Verve label would see her produce her most highly acclaimed recordings, at the peak of her vocal powers. This album inaugurated Fitzgerald’s Songbook series, each of the eight albums in the series focusing on a different composer of the canon known as the Great American Songbook. The album was recorded February 7–9 & March 27, 1956 in Hollywood, Los Angeles.
This album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have “qualitative or historical significance.” In 2003, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.