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Spotlight on Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)

Jazz is a type of popular music that developed from ragtime and the blues in New Orleans around 1900. Characteristics of jazz include syncopation (a type of rhythm in which important tones begin on weak beats or weak parts of beats, giving an “off-balance” feeling to the music), improvisation (music that is made up on the spot, as it is being performed), and scat singing (a style of improvised jazz singing that uses nonsense syllables to make the voice sound like an instrument).

Ella Fitzgerald, known as the “First Lady of Song,” the “Queen of Jazz,” and “Lady Ella,” was not only the greatest female jazz singer of the 20th century, but was one of the most popular and influential jazz singers of all time. She had a very wide (three-octave) vocal range, perfect pitch (which enabled her to sing in tune), and was known for her clear diction, pure vocal tone quality, and her ability to interpret the meaning of the words of the songs she sang. Ella learned to imitate the sound of instruments (especially the trumpet and trombone) with her scat singing. Not only did she help to develop the technique, but she was also famous for her ability to “scat.” Ella worked with nearly all the major jazz artists of her time, recorded over 2,000 songs on over 200 albums, and sold over 40 million records.

Ella Fitzgerald is the most honored jazz singer of all time. Her awards include:

• a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1960)

• 14 Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award (1967)

• the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award for lifetime achievement (1979)

• Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame inductee (1979)

• the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America (1983)

• the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Ronald Reagan (1987)

• the first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named “Ella” in her

honor (1989)

• the French Order of Arts and Letters (1990)

• our nation’s highest non-military honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by President George H. W. Bush (1992). The inscription on the medal reads: “Discovered as a teenager at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Ella Fitzgerald and her swing style of vocal jazz transcend the times. Her trademark scat captivates audiences, and as a cultural ambassador, her impressive vocal range stretches across oceans and political boundaries. Honored by the Kennedy Center for her lifetime achievements, inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame, and awarded the National Medal of Arts, it is fitting that the United States honors this ‘First Lady of Song.’”

• Grammy Hall of Fame inductee (with Louis Armstrong) (2016) for their 1956 album, Ella and Louis

There is a sculpture of Ella in Yonkers, New York, where she grew up, near the entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station, and in 2007 the US Postal Service issued the Ella Fitzgerald Commemorative Stamp.

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Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia. She moved with her mother to Yonkers, New York and attended public school, where she was a good student. Ella was a tomboy who loved baseball and singing, and she dreamed of becoming a famous tap dancer when she grew up.

In 1932 Ella’s mother was killed in a car accident, and Ella was sent first to an orphanage and then to New York City to live with her aunt. She took the loss very hard, started skipping school, and was sent to a reform school. Ella ran away in 1934 and, because she was afraid the police would find her if she returned to her aunt’s house, became homeless, dancing on the streets of Harlem to earn money to survive.

The Apollo Theater is a popular landmark in Harlem. In 1934 the theater began to present African American acts to audiences of all races and soon became known as the place “where stars are born and legends are made.” After the main show every Wednesday, names were drawn for the honor of appearing on Amateur Night the following week. Ella’s name was drawn and she came to the theater on November 21 dressed in second-hand clothes and men’s boots, prepared to dance. Right before she went on, a dancing team called the Edwards Sisters performed. “They were the dancingest sisters around,” she said, and decided to sing because she couldn’t compete with their dancing. The audience loved her singing and she won the $25 first prize. Part of the prize was an opportunity to perform during the main show the next week, but she wasn’t allowed to do that because of the way she was dressed.

Normally self-conscious and very shy, Ella was surprised to find that she had no fear on stage. “Once up there, I felt the acceptance and love from my audience,” she said. “I knew I wanted to sing before people the rest of my life.” Ella began to enter more talent shows and in January, 1935, she won a chance to perform for a week with a band at the Harlem Opera House. Soon she began singing with jazz drummer Chick Webb and his band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. At the Savoy, “The World’s Most Famous Ballroom,” large jazz bands called “Big Bands” played swing, a type of jazz music popular in the 1930s that has a strong beat and bouncy rhythm, closely associated with dancing. The Savoy was nicknamed “the home of happy feet.”

Ella was the star attraction in Chick Webb’s band, and by the time she was 20, she was a well-known singer in Harlem. In 1937 she was voted “top female singer” by readers of Down Beat magazine. When Webb’s band went on tour, she went along, and was paid $12.50 a week. Ella also started recording songs with Webb’s band.

In 1938, she and the the band’s song arranger, Van Alexander, co-wrote a version of the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.” The song rose to number 1 in Billboard’s jukebox charts, stayed on the pop charts for 17 weeks, sold over a million copies, and made her famous. Ella performed “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” in the Abbott and Costello film Ride ’Em Cowboy (1942). This song has become a jazz standard and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1987.

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When Webb died in 1939, Ella took over the band, which was renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, but she left the band in 1942 to start a solo career. Jazz was changing during this time, and the era of big swing bands was shifting toward bebop, a faster form of jazz performed by smaller groups of four or five musicians. Popular from 1940 to 1955, bebop, with its emphasis on improvisation, was not performed for dancing.

Ella experimented with the new style and started singing nonsense syllables, using her voice to sound like a trumpet or trombone, during her performances. “I just tried to do what I heard the horns in the band doing,” she said. Audiences loved her improvised scat singing and Ella’s specialty scat inspired many singers.

When Norman Granz became Ella’s manager in 1946, she appeared in his “Jazz at the Philharmonic” concerts, which were created to encourage racial harmony and promote jazz throughout the world. She also began touring extensively, travelling 40 to 45 weeks per year in America and abroad, singing to diverse audiences in packed houses. Granz created his record label, Verve, for her, and he produced the “Great American Songbook,” a series of eight sets of recordings of Ella singing popular music composed by great songwriters such as Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, and George and Ira Gershwin.

Ella became the first black artist to appear in some of the most exclusive clubs in America, including the Mocambo in West Hollywood, California and the Copacabana in New York City. She continued recording, and appeared on television shows and in movies and television commercials. In an “Is it live or is it Memorex?” ad, she sang a note that shattered glass while being recorded on Memorex cassette tape. When played back, the recording also broke the glass. She also appeared in commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken (“We do chicken right!”) and American Express.

Ella supported many charities and non-profit organizations and she made generous donations to organizations for disadvantaged children. In 1993, she established the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation to help people of all races, cultures, and beliefs. She wanted to promote a love of both reading and music, and hoped to help those who are at-risk and disadvantaged.

Ella performed 26 times at Carnegie Hall in New York City and became popular with generations of Americans by singing jazz, blues, pop, Christmas songs, children’s songs, and show tunes. She made her final recording in 1991 and retired after her last public performance in 1993, after suffering from heart disease and the effects of diabetes, which impaired her vision. Ella spent the last few years of her life at her home in Beverly Hills, California, where she died in 1996 from complications of diabetes.

Ella Fitzgerald made a lasting impact on the world of music. She was a true innovator over the course of her long career, and was one of the great ambassadors of jazz. Critic Frank Rich wrote that Ella “could turn any song into an oxygen rush of bouncing melody that reached the listener’s ears as pure, untroubled joy— the eternally young sound of a young country.” Although she sang several different styles of music, she always remained true to herself and to her artistic vision. In the words of Michael L. Maliner, “Fitzgerald was able to transcend circumstance and develop into one of the greatest musicians that America has ever produced. Musically, professionally, and personally, Ms. Fitzgerald was one-of-a-kind, an American treasure.”