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Ella Fitzgerald: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald was born on the 25th of April 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, into a world that offered few guarantees for a child of mixed heritage. Her father, William Ashland Fitzgerald, worked as a transfer wagon driver, and her mother, Temperance Fitzgerald, was a homemaker. The couple lived together in the East End section of Newport News for at least two and a half years after Ella's birth, though they were never married. By the early 1920s, her mother had moved to Yonkers, New York, with a new partner named Joseph da Silva, a Portuguese immigrant. This move placed Ella and her family in School Street, a poor Italian neighborhood where she began her formal education at the age of six. She was an outstanding student who moved through various schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929. Her early life was deeply rooted in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. It was within these church walls that she found her earliest musical experiences, though her true passion lay in dancing. Starting in third grade, she admired Earl Snakehips Tucker and performed for her peers on the way to school and during lunchtime. She listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters, eventually falling in love with Connee Boswell's lead vocals. She tried so hard to sound just like her, a dedication that would shape her future style. In 1932, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Her stepfather took care of her until April 1933, when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. This seemingly swift change in her circumstances, reinforced by rumors of ill treatment by her stepfather, led biographer Stuart Nicholson to speculate that Da Silva might have abused her. Fitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner, never talking publicly about this time in her life. When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale in The Bronx. 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.
The Apollo And The Savoy
Fitzgerald's path to stardom began on the 21st of November 1934, when she debuted at age 17 in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater. 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. Performing in the style of Connee Boswell, she sang Judy and The Object of My Affection and won first prize. 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. In January 1935, she won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. Later that year, she was introduced to drummer and bandleader Chick Webb by Bardu Ali. Although Webb was reluctant to sign her because she was gawky and unkempt, a diamond in the rough, after some convincing by Ali, Webb offered Fitzgerald the opportunity to test with his band at a dance at Yale University. 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. She recorded several hit songs, including Love and Kisses and If You Can't Sing It You'll Have to Swing It Mr. Paganini. However, it was Fitzgerald's 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, a song she co-wrote, that brought Fitzgerald 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. Webb died of spinal tuberculosis on the 16th of June 1939, and his band was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, with Fitzgerald taking on the role of bandleader. Fitzgerald and the band recorded for Decca and appeared at the Roseland Ballroom, where they received national exposure on NBC radio broadcasts. 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. In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in the band, Fitzgerald started to work as lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July, her band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia.
Common questions
When and where was Ella Fitzgerald born?
Ella Fitzgerald was born on the 25th of April 1917 in Newport News, Virginia. Her parents were William Ashland Fitzgerald and Temperance Fitzgerald, and the family lived in the East End section of Newport News for at least two and a half years after her birth.
How did Ella Fitzgerald start her music career?
Ella Fitzgerald began her music career on the 21st of November 1934 when she won an amateur night at the Apollo Theater at age 17. She originally intended to dance but sang instead and won first prize, which led to her joining Chick Webb's orchestra in 1935.
What major racial discrimination incident did Ella Fitzgerald experience in 1954?
Ella Fitzgerald and her entourage were ordered to leave a Pan-American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Australia in 1954 due to racial discrimination. They were stranded in Honolulu for three days before flying to Sydney, and they won a civil suit for racial discrimination against Pan-Am in January 1956.
When did Ella Fitzgerald die and what caused her death?
Ella Fitzgerald died on the 15th of June 1996 at her home from a stroke. She had suffered from diabetes for several years, which led to the amputation of both legs below the knee in 1993 and damaged her eyesight.
What are the most significant recordings in Ella Fitzgerald's discography?
Ella Fitzgerald's most significant recordings are the eight Song Book sets she recorded for Verve Records from 1956 to 1964. These albums include the Cole Porter Song Book and the Duke Ellington Song Book, which are considered her most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work.
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, she recalled that she just tried to do with her voice what she heard the horns in the band doing. Fitzgerald's 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. Her bebop recording of Oh, Lady Be Good! in 1947 was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists. 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. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers. In 1954, Fitzgerald made her first tour of Australia for the Australian-based American promoter Lee Gordon. 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 Sydney. Gordon had to arrange two later free concerts to compensate ticket holders. Although the four members of Fitzgerald's entourage , Fitzgerald, her pianist John Lewis, her assistant and cousin Georgiana Henry, and manager Norman Granz , all had first-class tickets on their scheduled Pan-American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Australia, they were ordered to leave the aircraft after they had already boarded and were refused permission to re-board the aircraft to retrieve their luggage and clothing. As a result, they were stranded in Honolulu for three days before they could get another flight to Sydney. Although a contemporary Australian press report quoted an Australian Pan-Am spokesperson who denied that the incident was racially based, Fitzgerald, Henry, Lewis and Granz filed a civil suit for racial discrimination against Pan-Am in December 1954, which they won on appeal in January 1956. In a 1970 television interview Fitzgerald said they received what she described as a nice settlement.
The Songbook Era
Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts by 1955. She left Decca, and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her. Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying that she had gotten to the point where she was only singing be-bop. She thought be-bop was it, and that all she had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where she had no place to sing. She realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman felt that she should do other things, so he produced Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book with her. It was a turning point in her life. On the 15th of March 1955, Fitzgerald opened her initial engagement at the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood, after Marilyn Monroe lobbied the owner for the booking. 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, Eartha Kitt, and Joyce Bryant 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, Fitzgerald's recordings were showcased nationally by Ben Selvin within the RCA Thesaurus transcription library. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book was the only Song Book on which the composer Fitzgerald 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 Fitzgerald's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. The New York Times wrote in 1996 that 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. Days after Fitzgerald's death, The New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that in the Song Book series, Fitzgerald performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis' contemporaneous integration of white and African-American soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians. Frank Sinatra, out of respect for Fitzgerald, prohibited Capitol Records from re-releasing his own recordings in separate albums for individual composers in the same way.
The Civil Rights Crusader
Fitzgerald had diabetes for several years of her later life, which led to numerous complications. Fitzgerald was hospitalized in 1985 briefly for respiratory problems, in 1986 for congestive heart failure, and in 1990 for exhaustion. 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 Fitzgerald performed. In 1993, both of her legs were amputated below the knee due to the effects of diabetes, a condition which also damaged her eyesight. Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances two years later. In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, Fitzgerald gave her last public performance. Three years later, Fitzgerald died at age 79 after years of declining health. She died in her home from a stroke on the 15th of June 1996. A few hours after her death, the Playboy Jazz Festival was launched at the Hollywood Bowl. In tribute, the marquee read: Ella We Will Miss You. Her funeral was private, and Fitzgerald was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Her accolades included 14 Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, the NAACP's inaugural President's Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Across town at the University of Southern California, Fitzgerald received the USC Magnum Opus Award, which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. In 1986, she received an honorary doctorate of music from Yale University. Four years later, Fitzgerald received an honorary doctorate of Music from Harvard University. The primary collections of Fitzgerald's media and memorabilia reside at and are shared between the Smithsonian Institution and the US Library of Congress. Her extensive cookbook collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, and her extensive collection of published sheet music was donated to UCLA. On the 9th of January 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own postage stamp. The stamp was released in April 2007 as part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series. On the 25th of April 2013, Fitzgerald was featured in Google Doodle, depicting her performing onstage. It celebrated
The Final Notes
what would have been Fitzgerald's 96th birthday. On the 25th of April 2017, the centenary of her birth, the UK's BBC Radio 2 broadcast three programs 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. 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. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Fitzgerald at No. 45 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.