Don't believe I've ever posted a big-band remote before, so here, "from the Roseland Ballroom, Broadway and 51st Street just off Times Square in the heart of New York's Great White Way, NBC brings you for your listening and dancing pleasure, Ella Fitzgerald, the tisket-a-tasket girl, and her orchestra!"

Ella is impossibly girlish-sounding at 23 (check out the portraits by Carl Van Vechten from the same year). The tunes are mostly krep, and Fitzgerald became a better singer, but so what? She's singing live, 67 years ago. You can hear the crowd talking. The sound is surprisingly good too, though it drops out a couple of times.

The show actually had a name other than Ella's. It was called, charmingly, "Jive Notes--And How!" (4 March 1940).

Update: Blogger won't let me fill in the title line. I curse Blogger, and how.

Update II: And just by way of contrast, how about another Gunsmoke. This one's called "Never Pester Chester" (5 July 1952).