Whatever happened to Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 2?

The Ella Fitzgerald anthology Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 1 came out in 2003, and Verve's website still says volume 2 is coming in the fall of 2004. Three years later, there's no sign of it. Anyone know what's up?

 

Great question. I'd like to have this one as well.

Chris

 

More than two years later, does anyone know what happened to this collection?

 

my guess is the industry shrunk too much and another 2 cd set of Ella compilation just wasn't going to make much money.

though based on the 4 cd Hollywood set they put out via Hip-O-Select, and the demand that seems to have had, if this does come out, I'd expect that'd be the way it does get reissued.

write Hip O Select a letter requesting it.

and grab that Hollywood set before it is out of print, maybe my single favorite Ella release, gotta say it is very strong.

 

That was a case of bad luck: there was a window of opportunity that passed this second jukebox by.

Volume 1 was released back in September 30, 2003. Volume 2 was planned for release the following year. And indeed, in the spring or early summer of 2004 the announcement was made that it would come out on September 21, 2004.

But, according to Verve at the time, some "difficulties with tape research" forced postponement for a few months, until the following year (2005).

Well, the second jukebox was ready when ...

... some internal shakeup took place inside Verve. The decision was made that Verve was going to concentrate on current music, and that from then on its catalogue would be handled by Universal. Amidst such changes, guess who was let go? Why, of course, the commendable producer who had been in charge of the jukebox project (and who had also been assiduously releasing the various Ella albums which hadn't yet been to digital).

Now, the only relative consolation to this sad story is that the second jukebox was not as exciting a project as the first one: the singles included in the aborted jukebox were to be album cuts that had also been issued on 45. Other than those album cuts, I never heard of anything else (unreleased tracks, rarities) that would be included, but of course, only those who were involved in the project know. (Besides, there might have been some cases in which the single contained a partially or completely different take from the one included in the given album ...)