"How Long Has This Been Going On?" from Ella Fitzgerald's 1950 album Ella Sings Gershwin features a brief quarter-chorus piano solo from Ellis Larkins on this George Gershwin ballad. Performed in B major with a 32-bar AABA form in a slow ballad tempo, the track exemplifies the delicate, chamber-like quality that distinguishes this album from Fitzgerald's more extroverted recordings. Larkins's piano solo is exquisitely restrained, his classical training evident in the precision and clarity of his touch. Gershwin composed this song for the 1927 musical Funny Face, though it was cut before the show opened and later interpolated into Rosalie. The melody's winding chromatic quality receives a sensitive treatment from both Fitzgerald and Larkins, who together create an atmosphere of hushed intimacy. Ella Sings Gershwin was among the first vocal jazz albums to focus on the work of a single composer, establishing a template that Fitzgerald would perfect with her later Verve songbook series. The voice-and-piano duo format demands absolute musical honesty, as there is nowhere to hide behind arrangement or orchestration. Both Fitzgerald's vocal and Larkins's accompaniment rise to this challenge, delivering a performance of quiet beauty that has aged gracefully over more than seven decades.
