Ella Fitzgerald

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,^[1] 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.

Fitzgerald also appeared in films and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century. Outside her solo career, she created music with

Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia.^[2] She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance "Tempie" Henry, both described as "mulatto" in the 1920 census.^[3] Her parents were unmarried but lived together in the East End section of Newport News^[4] for at least two and a half years after she was born. In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald's mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph da Silva,^[3] moved to Yonkers, in Westchester County, New York.^[3] Her half-sister, Frances da Silva, was born in 1923.^[5] By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, a poor Italian area.^[5] She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929.^[6]

She and her family were

Fitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters. She loved the Boswell Sisters' lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying: "My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it...I tried so hard to sound just like her."^[9]

In 1932, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident.^[10] Fitzgerald's stepfather took care of her until April 1933 when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt.^[11] This seemingly swift change in her circumstances, reinforced by what Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson describes as rumors of "ill treatment" by her stepfather, leaves him to speculate that Da Silva might have abused her.^[11]

Fitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner.^[12] She never talked publicly about this time in her life.^[13] When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale in The Bronx.^[14] When the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls, a state reformatory school in Hudson, New York.^[14]

Early career

While she seems to have survived during 1933 and 1934 in part by singing on the streets of Harlem, Fitzgerald debuted at the age of 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater.^[15][16] She had intended to go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated by a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead.^[16][17] Performing in the style of Connee Boswell, she sang "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection" and won first prize.^[18] She won the chance to perform at the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of her disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part of her prize.^[19]

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House.^[15] Later that year, she was introduced to drummer and bandleader Chick Webb by Bardu Ali.^[20] Although "reluctant to sign her...because she was gawky and unkempt, a 'diamond in the rough,'"^[9] after some convincing by Ali, Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band at a dance at Yale University.^[15]

Met with approval by both audiences and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb's orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group's performances at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.^[15] Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)".^[15] But 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.^[17][21]

Webb died of

She recorded nearly 150 songs with Webb's orchestra between 1935 and 1942. In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight.^[24]

Decca years

In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in Fitzgerald's band, Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, she started to work as lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July her band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia.^[25][26] While working for Decca Records, she had hits with Bill Kenny & the Ink Spots,^[27] Louis Jordan,^[28] and the Delta Rhythm Boys.^[29] Producer Norman Granz became her manager in the mid-1940s after she began singing for Jazz at the Philharmonic, a concert series begun by Granz.

With the demise of the swing era and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled: "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."^[18]

Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" arranged by Vic Schoen would later be described by The New York Times as "one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade....Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had tried similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the technique with such dazzling inventiveness."^[9] Her bebop recording of "Oh, Lady Be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.^[30]

Verve years

Fitzgerald made her first tour of Australia in July 1954 for the Australian-based American promoter Lee Gordon.^[31] This was the first of Gordon's famous "Big Show" promotions and the "package" tour also included Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw and comedian Jerry Colonna.

Although the tour was a big hit with audiences and set a new box office record for Australia, it was marred by an incident of racial discrimination that caused Fitzgerald to miss the first two concerts in

Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts by 1955. She left Decca, and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her. She later described the period as strategically crucial, saying: "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman ... felt that I should do other things, so he produced Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book with me. It was a turning point in my life."^[9]

On March 15, 1955, Ella Fitzgerald opened her initial engagement at the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood,^[35][36] after Marilyn Monroe lobbied the owner for the booking.^[37] The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. Bonnie Greer dramatized the incident as the musical drama, Marilyn and Ella, in 2008. It had previously been widely reported that Fitzgerald was the first black performer to play the Mocambo, following Monroe's intervention, but this is not true. African-American singers Herb Jeffries,^[38] Eartha Kitt,^[39] and Joyce Bryant^[40] all played the Mocambo in 1952 and 1953, according to stories published at the time in Jet magazine and Billboard.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, released in 1956, was the first of eight Song Book sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the Great American Songbook. Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience. The sets are the most well-known items in her discography and by 1956 Fitgerald's recordings were showcased nationally by Ben Selvin within the RCA Thesaurus transcription library.^[41]

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book was the only Song Book on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald. The Song Book series ended up becoming the singer's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. The New York Times wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration."^[9]

Days after Fitzgerald's death, The New York Times columnist

Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 and 1983; the albums being, respectively, Ella Loves Cole and Nice Work If You Can Get It. A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with Pablo Records, Ella Abraça Jobim, featuring the songs of Antônio Carlos Jobim.

While recording the Song Books and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers.^[9] In 1961 Fitzgerald bought a house in the Klampenborg district of Copenhagen, Denmark, after she began a relationship with a Danish man. Though the relationship ended after a year, Fitzgerald regularly returned to Denmark over the next three years and even considered buying a jazz club there. The house was sold in 1963, and Fitzgerald permanently returned to the United States.^[42]

There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. At the Opera House shows a typical Jazz at the Philharmonic set from Fitzgerald. Ella in Rome and Twelve Nights in Hollywood display her vocal jazz canon. Ella in Berlin is still one of her best-selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning performance of "Mack the Knife" in which she forgets the lyrics but improvises to compensate.

Verve Records was sold to

The surprise success of the 1972 album Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72 led Granz to found Pablo Records, his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums for the label. Ella in London recorded live in 1974 with pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Keter Betts and drummer Bobby Durham, was considered by many to be some of her best work. The following year she again performed with Joe Pass on German television station NDR in Hamburg. Her years with Pablo Records also documented the decline in her voice. "She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and her voice was harder, with a wider vibrato", one biographer wrote.^[43] Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993.^[44]

Film and television

She made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on The Frank Sinatra Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and alongside other greats Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and many others. She was also frequently featured on The Ed Sullivan Show. Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the "Three Little Maids" song from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta The Mikado alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore's weekly variety series in 1963. A performance at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters' television special Music, Music, Music.^[51]

Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, including an ad for

Ella Fitzgerald Just One of Those Things is a film about her life including interviews with many famous singers and musicians who worked with her and her son. It was directed by Leslie Woodhead and produced by Reggie Nadelson. It was released in the UK in 2019.[56]

Collaborations

Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with the vocal quartet Bill Kenny & the Ink Spots, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the guitarist Joe Pass, and the bandleaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

• From 1943 to 1950, Fitzgerald recorded seven songs with the Ink Spots featuring Bill Kenny. Of the seven, four reached the top of the pop charts, including "I'm Making Believe" and "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", which both reached No. 1.
• Fitzgerald recorded three Verve studio albums with Louis Armstrong, two albums of standards (1956's Ella and Louis and 1957's Ella and Louis Again), and a third album featured music from the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. Fitzgerald also recorded a number of sides with Armstrong for Decca in the early 1950s.
• Fitzgerald is sometimes referred to as the quintessential swing singer, and her meetings with Count Basie are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald features on one track on Basie's 1957 album One O'Clock Jump, while her 1963 album Ella and Basie! is remembered as one of her greatest recordings. With the 'New Testament' Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a young Quincy Jones, this album proved a respite from the 'Song Book' recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. Fitzgerald and Basie also collaborated on the 1972 album Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72, and on the 1979 albums Digital III at Montreux, A Classy Pair and A Perfect Match.
• Fitzgerald and Joe Pass recorded four albums together toward the end of Fitzgerald's career. She recorded several albums with piano accompaniment, but a guitar proved the perfect melodic foil for her. Fitzgerald and Pass appeared together on the albums
  Easy Living (1986), Speak Love (1983) and Fitzgerald and Pass... Again
  (1976).
• Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington recorded two live albums and two studio albums. Her Duke Ellington Song Book placed Ellington firmly in the canon known as the Great American Songbook, and the 1960s saw Fitzgerald and the 'Duke' meet on the
  Côte d'Azur for the 1966 album Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur, and in Sweden for The Stockholm Concert, 1966. Their 1965 album Ella at Duke's Place
  is also extremely well received.

Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen over her long career. The trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, the guitarist Herb Ellis, and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, Oscar Peterson, Lou Levy, Paul Smith, Jimmy Rowles, and Ellis Larkins all worked with Fitzgerald mostly in live, small group settings.

Illness and death

Fitzgerald had diabetes for several years of her later life, which had led to numerous complications.^[9] In 1985, Fitzgerald was hospitalized briefly for respiratory problems,^[57] in 1986 for congestive heart failure,^[58] and in 1990 for exhaustion.^[59] In March 1990, she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, with the Count Basie Orchestra for the launch of Jazz FM, plus a gala dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel at which she performed.^[60] In 1993, she had to have both of her legs amputated below the knee due to the effects of diabetes.^[61] Her eyesight was affected as well.^[9]

She died in her home from a

Fitzgerald married at least twice, and there is evidence that suggests that she may have married a third time. Her first marriage was in 1941, to Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The marriage was annulled in 1942.^[64] Her second marriage was in December 1947, to the famous bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances, whom they christened Ray Brown Jr. With Fitzgerald and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by his mother's aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953, due to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue to perform together.^[9]

In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment in Oslo, but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months' hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.^[65]

Fitzgerald was notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauzá, who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with Chick Webb, remembered that "she didn't hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music...She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself to herself, for the gig."^[43] When, later in her career, the Society of Singers named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, "I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do but I think I do better when I sing."^[18]

From 1949 to 1956, Fitzgerald resided in the

Bill Reed, author of Hot from Harlem: Twelve African American Entertainers, referred to Fitzgerald as the "Civil Rights Crusader", facing discrimination throughout her career.[70] In 1954 on her way to one of her concerts in Australia she was unable to board the Pan American flight due to racial discrimination.^[71] Although she faced several obstacles and racial barriers, she was recognized as a "cultural ambassador", receiving the National Medal of Arts in 1987 and America's highest non-military honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.^[69][72]

In 1993, Fitzgerald established the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation focusing on charitable grants for four major categories: academic opportunities for children, music education, basic care needs for the less fortunate, medical research revolving around diabetes, heart disease, and vision impairment.

The primary collections of Fitzgerald's media and memorabilia reside at and are shared between the Smithsonian Institution and the US Library of Congress.^[77]

Awards, citations and honors

Fitzgerald won 13

In 1958 Fitzgerald became the first African-American woman to win at the inaugural show.[78]

Other major awards and honors she received during her career were the

The career history and archival material from Fitzgerald's long career are housed in the Archives Center at the

In 1997, Newport News, Virginia created a week-long music festival with Christopher Newport University to honor Fitzgerald in her birth city.

Ann Hampton Callaway, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Patti Austin have all recorded albums in tribute to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album To Ella with Love (1996) features 14 jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the album also features the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Bridgewater's album Dear Ella (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Fitzgerald during her career, including the pianist Lou Levy, the trumpeter Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, double bassist Ray Brown. Bridgewater's following album, Live at Yoshi's, was recorded live on April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st birthday.

Austin's album, For Ella (2002) features 11 songs most immediately associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated for a

"Ella, elle l'a", a tribute to Fitzgerald written by Michel Berger and performed by French singer France Gall, was a hit in Europe in 1987 and 1988.^[82] Fitzgerald is also referred to in the 1976 Stevie Wonder hit "Sir Duke" from his album Songs in the Key of Life, and the song "I Love Being Here With You", written by Peggy Lee and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording of "Mack the Knife" from his album L.A. Is My Lady (1984) includes a homage to some of the song's previous performers, including 'Lady Ella' herself. She is also honored in the song "First Lady" by Canadian artist Nikki Yanofsky.

In 2008, the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News named its new 276-seat theater the Ella Fitzgerald Theater. The theater is located several blocks away from her birthplace on Marshall Avenue. The Grand Opening performers (October 11 and 12, 2008) were Roberta Flack and Queen Esther Marrow.

In 2012, Rod Stewart performed a "virtual duet" with Ella Fitzgerald on his Christmas album Merry Christmas, Baby, and his television special of the same name.^[83]

There is a bronze sculpture of Fitzgerald in Yonkers, the city in which she grew up, created by American artist Vinnie Bagwell. It is located southeast of the main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station in front of the city's old trolley barn. The statue's location is one of 14 tour stops on the African American Heritage Trail of Westchester County. A bust of Fitzgerald is on the campus of Chapman University in Orange, California. Ed Dwight created a series of over 70 bronze sculptures at the St. Louis Arch Museum at the request of the National Park Service; the series, "Jazz: An American Art Form", depicts the evolution of jazz and features various jazz performers, including Fitzgerald.^[84]

On January 9, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own postage stamp.^[52] The stamp was released in April 2007 as part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.^[85]

In April 2013, she was featured in Google Doodle, depicting her performing on stage. It celebrated what would have been her 96th birthday.^[86][87]

On April 25, 2017, the centenary of her birth, UK's BBC Radio 2 broadcast three programmes as part of an "Ella at 100" celebration: Ella Fitzgerald Night, introduced by Jamie Cullum; Remembering Ella; introduced by Leo Green; and Ella Fitzgerald – the First Lady of Song, introduced by Petula Clark.^[88]

In 2019, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things, a documentary by Leslie Woodhead, was released in the UK. It featured rare footage, radio broadcasts and interviews with Jamie Cullum, Andre Previn, Johnny Mathis, and other musicians, plus a long interview with Fitzgerald's son, Ray Brown Jr.^[56]

In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Fitzgerald at No. 45 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.^[89]

References

Sources

• Gourse, Leslie (1998). The Ella Fitzgerald Companion. London:
  ISBN 0-7119-6916-7
  .
• Hemming, Roy; Hajdu, David (1991). Discovering great singers of classic pop : a new listener's guide to the sounds and lives of the top performers and their recordings, movies, and videos. New York: Newmarket Press.
  OCLC 1033645473
  .
• Johnson, J. Wilfred (2001). Ella Fitzgerald: An Annotated Discography. McFarland.
  ISBN 0-7864-0906-1
  .
• Nicholson, Stuart (1996). Ella Fitzgerald: 1917–1996. London: Indigo.
  ISBN 978-0-575-40032-0
  .
• Nicholson, Stuart (2004). Ella Fitzgerald : the complete biography. New York: Routledge.
  OCLC 1033559908, 884645602
  .

Further reading

Library resources about
Ella Fitzgerald

---

• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

By Ella Fitzgerald

• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

• Gourse, Leslie (1998), The Ella Fitzgerald Companion: Seven Decades of Commentary. Music Sales Ltd;
  ISBN 0-02-864625-8
• Yazza, Houria (2000), Ella and Marilyn, the perfect friendship. NY 2000
• Johnson, J. Wilfred (2001), Ella Fitzgerald: A Complete Annotated Discography. McFarland & Co Inc.;
  ISBN 0-7864-0906-1

External links

Archives at
Location Music Division, Library of Congress Source Ella Fitzgerald collection, 1956–1992
How to use archival material

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ella Fitzgerald.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ella Fitzgerald.

• Ella Fitzgerald – official site
• Ella Fitzgerald discography at Discogs
• Ella Fitzgerald recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings
• Ella Fitzgerald at
  IMDb
• Ella Fitzgerald at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ella Fitzgerald at Find a Grave
• Ella Fitzgerald at the Library of Congress
• "Remembering Ella" by Phillip D. Atteberry (originally published in The Mississippi Rag, April 1996)
• Ella Fitzgerald at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University
• Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things (documentary) Archived June 13, 2022, at the Wayback Machine