Blue Rose

One year after this album, in 1957, Ella Fitzgerald would record the Duke Ellington Songbook with the man and his orchestra — but Rosemary Clooney got there first, and her version of his catalog is equally masterful. Clooney had been a pop hitmaker, but she left her hacky earlier work in the dust with felt, deeply evocative interpretations of “Mood Indigo” and “Passion Flower,” as well as a romp through the delightful lesser-known thirties number “I’m Checkin’ Out, Goom-Bye.”