A-Tisket A-Tasket

New York: Robbins Music Corporation, 1938. Presumed First Edition, First printing Thus. Sheet Music, stapled at left side. as is. 6 pages. Format is approximately 9 inches by 12 inches. Bottom edge has a tear and chipping near the center of the sheets. Stained. Illustrated front cover. It appears to have become disbound and was stapled twice on the left side to hold it together. Front cover has a large black and white photograph of Al Donahue next to a drawing of a person in a feathered cap with a basket. Second page and read cover each have snippets of three songs with commentary. Pages 3-5 present the words and music of the Fitzgerald-Freeman classic. It was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her public acclaim. "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a major hit on the radio and was also one of the biggest-selling records of the decade. "A Tisket A Tasket" is a nursery rhyme first recorded in America in the late nineteenth century. It was used as the basis for a very successful and highly regarded 1938 recording by Ella Fitzgerald, composed by Fitzgerald in conjunction with Al Feldman (later known as Van Alexander). It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13188. Van Alexander (May 2, 1915 - July 19, 2015) was an American bandleader, arranger, and composer. Van Alexander was born Alexander Van Vliet Feldman. He landed a job selling arrangements to Chick Webb in the middle of the 1930s. A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a hit for Webb and Ella Fitzgerald. Alexander arranged other nursery rhymes for jazz, such as "Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?" He worked in Hollywood extensively as a composer, arranger, and conductor for film scores. Al Donahue (June 12, 1904, Dorchester, Massachusetts - February 20, 1983, Fallbrook, California) was an American violinist and big band leader. Donahue got his start playing in Boston-area campus bands and led a band at Boston's Weber Duck Inn in 1925. During the mid-1930s he substituted for Ray Noble as leader at the Rainbow Room of Rockefeller Center. Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 - June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook. While Fitzgerald appeared in movies and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Cheek to Cheek", "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)". In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.