Ella Fitzgerald
The lyricist Ira Gershwin said he never truly knew how good his songs were until she sang them.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Those who stood with her ⏳🌊
- FamilyTemperance Fitzgerald
She raised young Ella alone and died from the aftereffects of a car accident.
- PatronageChick Webb
Her first benefactor, he took her into his band and introduced her to the world.
- FamilyRay Brown
They married in 1947 and adopted a son, and their musical bond endured after the divorce.
- PatronNorman Granz
As her manager and producer, he built the Verve label and the Songbook series with her.
- ColleagueLouis Armstrong
Across three duet albums, they formed a pairing that would endure in jazz history.
- FriendshipMarilyn Monroe
She is said to have helped secure the Mocambo club booking in Los Angeles, and a friendship grew between them.
I. From Newport News to Yonkers · 1917–1932 (age 0–15)
(Newport News) She was born in April 1917 in Newport News, Virginia. Her mother, Temperance Williams, and her father, William Fitzgerald, were never formally married, and they parted not long after their daughter was born. (Yonkers) Her mother moved with a man named Joseph Da Silva to Yonkers, New York, and settled there. In 1923 a half-sister, Frances, was born, and the two girls grew up under one roof. (Talent) She is said to have done well in school and to have been a fast runner. She sang in the church choir and played with the neighborhood children at imitating the styles of radio singers like Connie Boswell. She loved to dance, too, and later recalled that her heart had been set on dancing before singing.
II. The streets of Harlem · 1932–1934 (age 15–17)
(Loss) In 1932 her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. She was fifteen. (Hardship) After losing her mother she went to live with an aunt, but money was scarce. She is said to have left school and earned pocket money on the streets running errands and acting as a lookout, and for a time she was held at a New York State reformatory for girls. (Shadow) For many years she did not speak publicly about the loss and instability of this period. Biographers point to the poverty and loneliness she endured then as the root of the temperament that later drove her to seek perfection, at least onstage, as a way of protecting herself.
III. The Apollo and Chick Webb · 1934–1942 (age 17–25)
(Apollo) In November 1934 she took the stage at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She had meant to dance, but when her turn came she changed her mind and sang instead, and she won that night. (Chick Webb) That performance caught the eye of the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb, and she joined his orchestra. Webb is said to have hesitated at first to take her on, but he changed his mind once he heard her sing, and afterward he cherished her like a daughter. (Hit) In 1938 “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which she fashioned from a nursery-rhyme tune with the arranger Van Alexander, became a major hit. Thanks to the co-writing credit, she had, unusually for a twenty-one-year-old, an income from royalties. (Succession) In 1939 Chick Webb died of a long illness at thirty-four. The orchestra was reorganized under her name and carried on as “Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra,” and at twenty-two she shouldered the heavy responsibility of leading a band.
The first hit that made her a star in the Chick Webb years, and the song that brought her first royalties as a co-writer.
- A call-and-response structure, with the band's riffs trading lines with her voice, drives the whole song.
- Built on a nursery-rhyme tune, its melody is simple and repetitive, and it sticks easily in the ear.
- Chick Webb's drumming underpins a buoyant swing rhythm.
- Her diction is crisp and girlish, keeping alive the freshness of a twenty-one-year-old newcomer.
IV. Bebop and scat · 1942–1949 (age 25–32)
(Disbanding) Around 1942, as the cost of maintaining a big band became too much to bear, the orchestra broke up. From then on she continued as a solo singer. (Bebop) Encountering the fast, intricate harmonies and rhythms played by a new generation such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, she refined scat singing, the art of imitating instruments with the voice. Sharing the stage with them, she and these musicians influenced one another. (Marriage) Her first marriage, to Benny Kornegay in 1941, was annulled soon after. In 1947 she married the bassist Ray Brown, and in 1949 they adopted a son, Ray Brown Jr. The two divorced in 1953, but their musical partnership continued long after. (Mastery) In recordings such as “Flying Home,” made in 1945, her scat was judged to have reached the point of rendering the rapid figures of a saxophone note for note in her voice.
A recording that captures the peak of the scat style she honed among the bebop generation after the band broke up.
- As if re-creating the Lionel Hampton band's famous instrumental with her vocal cords, she traces in her voice the rapid figures one would expect from a horn.
- In the scat passages, the pitch climbs and descends in steps, building to a climax.
- Even at a fast tempo her diction never blurs, and she is praised for an instrument-like precision.
V. Norman Granz and the Songbook era · 1953–1959 (age 36–42)
(Granz) In the early 1950s, Norman Granz, the producer behind the touring concert series “Jazz at the Philharmonic,” became her manager. Granz held to the principle of refusing to play segregated venues, and the same terms applied to her tours. (Verve) Around 1955 she wound up her long contract with Decca and moved to Verve Records, which Granz founded expressly for her. There she began the Songbook series, gathering and singing the songs of American popular composers such as Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin, and Irving Berlin. (Ellington) In 1957 she recorded his songs with the orchestra of her longtime friend Duke Ellington. It was an unusual collaboration, with Ellington and his longtime partner Billy Strayhorn handling the arrangements themselves. (Armstrong) In 1956 she released her first duet album with Louis Armstrong, “Ella and Louis,” followed the next year by “Ella and Louis Again.” The exchanges between Armstrong's gravelly low voice and her clear tone became the benchmark for jazz vocal duets. (Mocambo) In 1955, the story goes, the actress Marilyn Monroe asked the owner of the Mocambo club in Los Angeles to book her, promising to sit in the front row every night. The engagement opened the door to a far wider audience.
The first fruit of the Songbook series launched on Verve, it opened an era of gathering and singing the standards of the American popular song.
- Buddy Bregman's arrangements for big band and strings give each song a different color.
- She is said to have sharpened her enunciation (diction) with special care to honor the intent of the songwriter who wrote the lyrics.
- Ballads alternate with up-tempo numbers, so the whole album flows like a single performance.
A duet album with Louis Armstrong in which two masters, across differences of age and career, make room for each other.
- Backed by the Oscar Peterson Trio, the setting leaves ample space that never intrudes on the two singers' conversation.
- Armstrong's gravelly low voice and Fitzgerald's clear tone play off each other as they trade phrases (trading).
- The tempo is mostly unhurried, giving the impression of two veterans sharing a song without any rush.
An album made in direct collaboration with her old friend Duke Ellington, it went beyond a covers record to become a meeting of composer and interpreter.
- Arranged by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn themselves, she sings over the orchestra's distinctive harmonic colors.
- It includes a suite-form track newly written for Ellington, and is regarded as a collaboration that goes beyond mere covers.
- Her scat improvisations interweave with the orchestra's horn harmonies, almost overlapping them.
VI. A voice for the world · 1960–1978 (age 43–61)
(Berlin) At a live concert in West Berlin in 1960, she forgot the lyrics while singing “Mack the Knife” and made up new ones on the spot. The record capturing that moment won that year's Grammy for Best Female Vocal Performance, Album. (Grammy) She had already won a Grammy in 1958, recorded as one of the first Black women performers ever to receive the award. (Touring) Touring the world, from Europe to Japan, she earned the nickname the First Lady of Jazz. In every city she proved her drawing power, filling concert halls to capacity. (Character) Colleagues recall that although she brimmed with confidence onstage, in reality she suffered from stage fright for years and did not much enjoy interviews. For her, singing was the most comfortable language in which to reveal herself.
A live performance in which she forgot the lyrics and filled the gap with improvisation, it won that year's Grammy for Best Female Vocal Performance, Album — a recording that stands as a symbol of her quick wit.
- The passage in which she forgot the lyrics mid-performance and made up new ones on the spot became the emblem of this record.
- In the improvised section she slips in a playful phrase imitating Louis Armstrong's voice, read as an affectionate tribute to a colleague.
- It captures intact the quick, responsive interplay with the band that only a live show has, along with the cheers of the audience.
VII. The last songs · 1979–1996 (age 62–79)
(Health) From the late 1970s on, diabetes and heart disease caused her health to decline visibly. In 1986 she underwent heart surgery. (Retirement) She withdrew from the stage after a 1991 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. In 1993, complications from diabetes led to the amputation of both legs below the knee. (Rest) On June 15, 1996, she died at her home in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. She was seventy-nine. (Legacy) She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1979, the National Medal of Arts in 1987 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. Her diction, her scat and her songbook interpretations remained a standard for later generations of vocalists.
Lesser-known stories
For a long time it was little known that after losing her mother in 1932 she spent a period at a girls' reform institution in Hudson, New York (the New York State Training School for Girls). Until biographers took up the research, this period remained a blank in her life, almost never mentioned. It is said that before stepping onstage at Amateur Night, she had originally planned to dance. But the Edwards Sisters, who went on just before her, seemed such superb dancers that she lost her nerve and switched to singing on the spot — a story preserved in several recollections. It is counted among the most famous accidents in jazz history. In 1955, during a concert in Houston, Texas, Norman Granz, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet and others were arrested by police for shooting dice in a dressing room. Granz paid the fines and got them out, and in later interviews he repeatedly cited the incident as an example of racially motivated policing.
Glossary 📚🔎
Scat
(In jazz) An improvised singing style that uses meaningless syllables instead of lyrics, treating the voice like an instrument. The singer invents rapid figures on the spot, like a saxophone or trumpet player. Think of it as freestyling a rap, but in hums.
Bebop
(In jazz) A jazz style that emerged in the 1940s, with fast, complex harmonies and rhythms; unlike the easygoing dance music of the swing era, it was music meant for focused listening. Think of it as a soccer match that goes beyond the basics to become a contest of dazzling individual skill — a style that lets each player show off their improvisational prowess to the fullest.
Songbook
(Literal meaning) Just as the word combines song and book, it means a book or record that collects one composer's songs. (In jazz) A project in which a single singer selects the signature songs of one composer or lyricist and performs them across one or more albums. Like reading an anthology of one author's short stories, it lets you survey that composer's world in a single sweep.
Call and response
(In jazz) A structure in which a piece unfolds as one side throws out a short figure and the other side takes it up and answers. It works on the same principle as a congregation responding to a preacher's words in church, or students shouting back a teacher's chant at school. (Elsewhere) In education, the term also refers to a teaching technique for drawing out student participation.
Amateur Night
(In jazz) An event where newcomers who had never performed on a proper stage competed in singing or dancing, with the audience's reaction serving as the sole criterion. It was much like a school talent show where the winner is chosen by applause.
Trading
(In jazz) A practice in which two players or singers take turns exchanging improvisations in short sections. It is like trading bars in a rap battle, or picking up each other's words as in a conversation with a friend.