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photo by Michael Epis

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1972 SUPER BOWL

Ella Fitzgerald

Long before Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Mary J Blige concocted their beats and flows, it was jazz chanteuse Ella Fitzgerald who reigned over half-time at the NFL Super Bowl, which itself reigns as the premier entertainment moment across the known universe (and the unknown ones too I suppose). That’s so, even if the NFL does not pay the performers – and it’s perhaps the only occasion when “the exposure” really is worth it.

Before Ella arrived – accompanied by trumpet legend Al Hirt – at Super Bowl VI (the Roman numerals make the whole thing more important) in 1972, the half-time show was largely the preserve of marching bands and the like, charmingly provincial, much in the fashion of the half-time sprint that so enthrals AFL crowds at their grand finals, even if taxi drivers and suburban footballers have been participants in recent years.

Super Bowl VI was contested by the Dallas Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins in New Orleans. The Big Easy is a warm city, but, despite the sunshine, 1972 remains the coldest Super Bowl played outdoors (4°C), which perhaps explains Ella’s fur coat. Even though it’s played in winter, it has rained hard only once at the Super Bowl – in Miami 2007, the year Prince played, the highlight being ‘Purple Rain’. Could Prince really just make it rain on command?

New Orleans, of course, is the home of jazz, and it elected to use the half-time break to honour its favourite son, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who had not long died. Who better to perform said duties than The First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, who recorded three landmark albums with Armstrong in the 1950s?

Ella performed ‘Mack the Knife’, and fellow jazz singer Carol Channing sang the city’s unofficial anthem, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. Sadly, remarkably, no tape exists.

Jazz at the time remained mainstream, and it featured in several more 1970s Super Bowls, but it’s hard to imagine any jazz artist getting a gig these days.

For the record, the Cowboys beat the Dolphins 24-3 back in 1972, despite the latter receiving advice from President Richard Nixon, a big gridiron fan, who called coach Don Shula, supposedly at 1.30am, to suggest a play, involving a pass to key offensive player Paul Warfield. Nixon had done the same thing the week before with the Washington Redskins coach. Shula instructed his team to execute Nixon’s suggestion, but it flubbed.