Ella Johnson

During the 1940s and 1950s, Ella Johnson served as lead vocalist for the orchestra fronted by her brother Buddy Johnson, the setting in which her abilities reached their fullest expression. Subsequent solo recordings she made for Mercury stand as diminished echoes of those earlier band performances. Although several of her successful numbers moved at brisk tempos, one instance being “I Don’t Want Nobody,” her interpretive gifts surfaced most tellingly on slower material and smoldering blues pieces. Her initial Decca sessions from the mid-1940s, much of which has never appeared in reissued form, remain strikingly assured. At her strongest, Ella projected a tone that was at once sulky, exposed, and intensely seductive. As with so many elements of her personal history, this quality arose without artifice. Resemblances to Billie Holiday naturally suggest themselves, yet Ella remained an independent stylist. Ella Johnson died in New York City on February 16, 2004.