The First Lady of Song...Ella Fitzgerald [1918 - 1996]

“WHEN ELLA FITZGERALD died in 1996, America lost a strong link its cultural past. Moreover, the entertainment community lost one of the pioneering voices in popular music. For millions of BLACK AMERICAN WOMEN who had looked to Ella for spiritual and creative inspiration, the loss was immeasurable. “I always thank God,“ Ella told Jet magazine in 1988. “I’m here because this is what I love to do...” After writing and singing with some of the world’s greatest composers, Ella Fitzgerald left a legacy of recordings and performances that will remain a benchmark in classical jazz forever. For a timid girl from a southern town, Ella’s legacy is remarkable because her skills surpassed those of uncounted other singers-men and women, black and white-throughout the history of American popular entertainment. “Male or female, the best singer on the planet,” legendary jazzman Mel Tourme said of her after she died.

Born in Newport News, Virginia on April 25, 1918, Ella was a shy girl. Her parents were unmarried, and Ella’s father died shortly after her birth. In the mid-twenties, her moved the family to Yonkers, New York. There Ella grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood that included Greek, Irish, Italian, and eastern European immigrants. She attended public school only until the tenth grade. Then, according to her biographies, she fled her mother’s home, determined to escape from an abusive stepfather...

When she was sixteen, Ella was persuaded by some girlfriends to compete in the popular Amateur Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, which was frequented by dozens of world-famous black entertainers, including composer Duke Ellington and dancer Bill Robinson. One night in 1934 Ella and her friends giddily chose straws to see who could perform in the amateur talent contest. Ella drew the short draw and her pushed her into taking the stage. They had no idea that their sky, slightly overweight friend could sing like an angel. Onstage, her knees knocking together nervously, Ella sang two songs: “Object of My Affection” and “Judy”... She won first prize...and Ella began appearing in the amateur night contest regularly, often winning the first prize.

Months later, after her name had become well known in Harlem, an executive at CBS Radio invited Ella to audition. Overcoming her extreme shyness, Ella went to the midtown Manhattan CBS studios and thoroughly impressed the network executives. During this time, the Great Depression kept many Americans tuned to their radios, where the entertainment was inexpensive and the range of offerings-from soap operas to band performances-was wide. Ella was not yet eighteen years old, but she realized that her gift for singing might just provide a decent way to make a living. She signed a contract with CBS Radio, an agreement that she would never fulfill.

Ella’s mother died in 1935, and the teenager found herself orphaned. Because she was not yet of legal age, and had no official “guardian” to oversee her interests, the CBS executives did not let Ella perform. She was heartbroken, even more so because city and welfare officials remanded her a New York orphanage. Singing was not encouraged in the state home and Ella was forced to take up “marketable skills” like typing and stenography...

When drummer and bandleader Chick Webb first saw Ella, he made a crude statement about her being “ugly.” But Bardu Ali, the Chick Webb band member who had heard Ella onstage at the Apollo, wouldn’t let Webb get away without hearing the youngster sing. Chick Webb and her orchestra were playing at the Savoy Ballroom in New York, and Ali convinced the testy bandleader to give the soft-spoken young woman a listen.

Within a matter of weeks, Ella made her first official appearance with the band, in a concert at Yale University. She so impressed Webb--and the wealthy undergraduate--that the bandleader made her his official singer shortly thereafter. Webb also took Ella under his wings in a brotherly manner, paying her expenses out of his own salary, when his agent refused to pay, Webb and his wife also legally adopted Ella, removing her once and for all from the dreary world of the state orphanage. On June 12, 1935, Ella made her first recording with the Chick Webb band. Soon her recording of “Love and Kisses” hit it big with jazz fans, and Ella was on her way to a productive period of collaborating with Webb.

In 1938, with Al Feldman, she co wrote a song based on a popular children’s rhyme, A-Tisket, A-Tasket” gave the Chick Webb Band its first nationwide hit record. In cities and small towns all over America Ella’s voice could be heard drifting from radios. An energetic ode to a young girl’s innocence, the song won Ella fans from all walks of life, from other musicians, like Frank Sinatra and music lovers, white and black, in every corner of the nation.

Chick Webb died unexpectedly in 1939, when Ella was twenty-one. For the next three years, she fronted the band, holding it together, touring jazz clubs and dance halls of America. In 1942...the Chick Webb broke up, Ella was on her own again. But now, she had a loyal community of singers, musicians and songwriters eager to help her keep singing.

For the next fifteen years, Ella made some of the most ASTOUNDING RECORDINGS in the HISTORY of America POPULAR MUSIC. In 1946 her manager, had a brainstorm: Why not have Ella record entire albums of works by well-known popular composers. The first of these...known as Ella’s Songbooks recordings of the works of Cole Porter. Ella also recorded albums devoted to the works of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Harold Arklen, and Rodgers and Hart. She had distinguished herself during the 30s and 50s as a phenomenally creative singer (especially her ability to scat, or sing in a style akin to a musical instrument)...Ella became a world-famous classical jazz artist...In the late 50s, she recorded with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. She won her first grammy away for the Irving Berlin Songbook in 1958. It was the FIRST GRAMMY ever award to a BLACK WOMAN musician...

With prominent fans and friends like Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton encouraging her, Ella developed a unique singing style that was genuine and spectacularly diverse....After developing an improvisational singing style that combined bebop, jazz and blues, Ella became a favorite on the worldwide concert scene...In the early seventies, after the deaths of close friends Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Ella decided to slow down a bit... She began spending more time at her Beverly Hills home and even appeared in the commercial endorsement American Express and Memorex. By the mid-eighties, Ella had survived numerous health problems, including failing eyes and the onset of diabetes.

Throughout, she remained a thoughtful, low-key star, a jazz chanteuse... During her long, rich career, she carved a path for BLACK WOMEN singers like LENA HORNE, CASSANDRA WILSON and SARAH VAUGHN. For eighteen consecutive years, she was named outstanding performer of the year by Downbeat magazine, the jazz industry bible.

After receiving her first Grammy...Ella went on to win a dozens more of the music industry’s most coveted award... She had one, and raised a niece, but for the most part she lived her life as she wished: writing, recording and performing songs for an audience that will never forget her soaring notes and perfect phrasing. “

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Excerpts from “Fifty Black Women Who Changed America”

Alexander, Amy “Fifty Black Women Who Changed America” New Jersey: Birch Lane Press, 1999:141

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kocolicious,

somehow I came to believe Ella was younger when she recorded this song (1938).

I can still hear it... and reaction in my neighborhood.

She was absolutely great!!!

PEACE

Jim Chester