Ella Fitzgerald
|
---|
Elia in 1947
|
|
Birth name
| Ella Jane Fitzgerald
|
---|
Born
| (
1917-04-25
)
April 25, 1917
Newport News
,
Virginia
,
U.S.
|
---|
Died
| June 15, 1996
(1996-06-15)
(aged 79)
Beverly Hills
,
California
, U.S.
|
---|
Genres
| Ballads
,
swing
,
traditional pop
,
vocal jazz
|
---|
Occupation(s)
| singer
|
---|
Instruments
| voice
|
---|
Years active
| 1934?1993
|
---|
Labels
| Capitol
,
Decca
,
Pablo
,
Reprise
,
Verve
|
---|
Ella Jane Fitzgerald
(April 25, 1917 ? June 15, 1996), was an
American
jazz
singer. She was called "Lady Ella", the "Queen of Jazz", and the "First Lady of Song".
[1]
Her voice spanned three
octaves
. She could sing very high notes and very low notes. She was famous for her
scat singing
. She won 14
Grammy Awards
.
[2]
She was awarded the National Medal of Art and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom
.
Ella Fitzgerald was born in 1917 in
Newport News, Virginia
,
United States
to William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald.
[3]
Soon after Ella was born, her parents separated. She went to live in
Yonkers, New York
with her mother and her mother's boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. In 1923, Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born. When she was a child, Fitzgerald lived in the
Colored
Orphan
Asylum
in Riverdale,
the Bronx
.
[4]
As a youngster, Fitzgerald wanted to be a
dancer
. She loved listening to
jazz
music by
Louis Armstrong
,
Bing Crosby
and
The Boswell Sisters
. She especially liked the 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."
[5]
In 1932, Fitzgerald's mother died.
[3]
Ella began doing badly at school. At one time, she had a job as a lookout at a
brothel
and a job with some people with
Mafia
connections.
[6]
She got into trouble with the
police
, and was sent to a reform school. She escaped from the reformatory, and for a time was
homeless
.
Fitzgerald had her first job as a singer when she was 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Harlem Opera House in
Harlem
,
New York
. She was able to compete in one of its famous "Amateur Nights". At first she was going to go on stage and dance but,
intimidated
by some local dancers, she decided to sing instead. She won the first prize of
US$
25 singing Connee Boswell's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection".
[7]
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the
Tiny Bradshaw
band at the Harlem Opera House. She met a drummer and bandleader called
Chick Webb
here. Webb had already hired a singer called Charlie Linton to work with the band. According to
The New York Times
, Webb was "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a
diamond
in the rough.
"
[5]
Webb let her try singing with his band when they played a dance at
Yale University
.
Fitzgerald began singing often with Webb's
Orchestra
during 1935, at Harlem's
Savoy Ballroom
. She recorded several hit songs with them, including "
Love and Kisses
" and "
(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)
". In 1938 she co-wrote and sang a version of the
nursery rhyme
, "
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
". After this, she started getting famous.
Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra". Fitzgerald became the bandleader. She recorded nearly 150 sides during her time with the orchestra.
[5]
In 1942, Fitzgerald left the band and began to work as a
solo
singer. She was signed to the
Decca
label, and she had several popular hit songs. She recording with other musicians like the
Ink Spots
,
Louis Jordan
, and the
Delta Rhythm Boys
.
Decca's
Milt Gabler
became her manager and she began working often for the jazz
producer
Norman Granz
. She often sang in his
Jazz at the Philharmonic
concerts. Then, Granz became her manager, but he did not record her on any of his record labels for nearly a
decade
.
In the mid-1940s, after the
swing era
, and the end of the great touring
big bands
, jazz music became quite different. A new kind of jazz called
bebop
became popular and Fitzgerald changed her style of singing. She worked with
Dizzy Gillespie
's big band and started including
scat singing
as a big part of her performances. About singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald said, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the
horns
in the band doing."
[7]
Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" was later 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."
[5]
Her
be-bop
recording of "
Oh, Lady be Good!
" (1947) was also very popular, and made people think of her as one of the most important jazz singers.
Granz did not like some of the music Fitzgerald was given at this time, so during her last years on the Decca label she recorded some
duets
with
pianist
Ellis Larkins
, released in 1950 as
Ella Sings Gershwin
.
In 1955, Fitzgerald left Decca, and joined Granz's new record label,
Verve Records
. She said later, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing bebop. I thought bebop 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
The Cole Porter Songbook
with me. It was a turning point in my life."
[5]
A new album,
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
, was released in 1956. It was the first of eight multi-album "Songbook" sets that she would record for Verve between 1956 and 1964. Many of the songs were
standards
and Fitzgerald tried to cross over into a non-jazz audience.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook
was the only
Songbook
on which the composer of the songs also played with her.
Duke Ellington
and
Billy Strayhorn
, who had worked together for a long time, both played on half the set's 38 tracks, and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues", and a musical piece about Fitzgerald (the only "Songbook" track that Fitzgerald does not sing on).
The
Songbook
series became the Fitzgerald's most critically acclaimed and popular work.
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."
[5]
Ella Fitzgerald also recorded albums of the songs of
Cole Porter
and
George Gershwin
in 1972 and 1983. The albums were called
Ella Loves Cole
and
Nice Work If You Can Get It
. A later album of songs by a single composer was released when she was with
Pablo Records
,
Ella Abraca Jobim
, with songs by
Antonio Carlos Jobim
.
While she was recording the
Songbooks
and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the
United States
and internationally, with
Norman Granz
. Granz helped her to become one of the most important live jazz performers.
[5]
In the mid-1950s, Fitzgerald became the first
African-American
to perform at the
Mocambo
(a
Hollywood
nightclub
), after
Marilyn Monroe
had persuaded the owner to make the booking. This was very important in Fitzgerald's career. The event was turned into a play by
Bonnie Greer
which is to receive a production in London's West End from November 2009.
Some live albums on Verve that she recorded are well thought of by critics:
Ella at the Opera House
,
Ella in Rome
and
Ella in Berlin
.
In later life, Fitzgerald kept a busy concert schedule, but her health worsened. She had heart
surgery
in 1986. She had
diabetes
, which accounted for her failing eyesight. Her diabetes worsened, and both legs were cut off (amputated) below the knees. She never completely recovered. She was unable to perform often. She spent time with family. Fitzgerald died in her
Beverly Hills, California
home on June 15, 1996 from a
stroke
. She was interred in the Sunset Mission Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
[8]
By the 1990s, Fitzgerald had recorded more than 200 songs. In 1991, she gave her final concert at
Carnegie Hall
. She had performed there 26 times. She received numerous awards. In 1979, she received
Kennedy Center Honors
. In 1987, she received the National Medal of Arts. She received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom
. France presented her with the Commander of Arts and Letters award.
Yale University
,
Dartmouth
, and other schools awarded her
honorary doctorates
.
[8]
Several of Fitzgerald's awards, significant personal possessions, and documents were given to the
Smithsonian Institution
, the library of
Boston University
, the
Library of Congress
, and the Schoenberg Library at
UCLA
.
In 1941, Fitzgerald married Benny Kornegay, a
convicted
drug dealer
. The marriage was
annulled
after two years. In December 1947, she married
double bass
player
Ray Brown
. They
adopted
a child of Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances. They named him
Ray Brown, Jr.
. Fitzgerald and Brown
divorced
in 1953.
[5]
In July 1957,
Reuters
reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young
Norwegian
, in
Oslo
. The affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was
sentenced
to five months hard labor in
Sweden
for stealing money from a young woman.
[3]
- ↑
Scott Yanow.
"Ella Fitzgerald"
. allmusic.com
. Retrieved
2007-03-16
.
- ↑
"Awards"
. The Official Web Site of Ella Fitzgerald
. Retrieved
2009-09-06
.
- ↑
3.0
3.1
3.2
Nicholson, Stuart (1993).
Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz
. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.
ISBN
0-575-40032-3
.
- ↑
Bernstein, Nina.
"Ward of the State;The Gap in Ella Fitzgerald's Life"
,
The New York Times
, June 23, 1996. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Her most recent biographer, Stuart Nicholson, has surmised that the authorities caught up with her and placed her in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale."
- ↑
5.0
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6
5.7
Stephen Holden (1996-06-16).
"Ella Fitzgerald, the Voice of Jazz, Dies at 79"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
2008-04-06
.
- ↑
Frank Rich (1996-06-19).
"Journal; How High the Moon"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
2008-04-06
.
- ↑
7.0
7.1
Jim Moret (1996-06-15).
"
'First Lady of Song' passes peacefully, surrounded by family"
. CNN. Archived from
the original
on 2006-11-29
. Retrieved
2007-01-30
.
- ↑
8.0
8.1
United States History: Ella Fitzgerald