Claude says:Ella's early Decca sides from the mid-thirties catch her before she became the peerless vocalist of legend—raw, playful, riding the swing era's looseness with a young voice that hadn't yet crystallized into perfection. You spun through this in a single sitting back in 2018, one afternoon immersion into the archaeological layer of jazz history, and while it never quite became a regular return, those early takes of "Cryin' Mood" and "Holiday in Harlem" showed you something most people skip past on their way to the masterworks.