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Biography

Dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.

Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.)

She performed at top venues all over the world, and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common – they all loved her.

Humble but happy beginnings

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Va. on April 25, 1917. Her father, William, and mother, Temperance (Tempie), parted ways shortly after her birth. Together, Tempie and Ella went to Yonkers, N.Y, where they eventually moved in with Tempie’s longtime boyfriend Joseph Da Silva. Ella’s half-sister, Frances, was born in 1923 and soon she began referring to Joe as her stepfather.

To support the family, Joe dug ditches and was a part-time chauffeur, while Tempie worked at a laundromat and did some catering. Occasionally, Ella took on small jobs to contribute money as well. Perhaps naïve to the circumstances, Ella worked as a runner for local gamblers, picking up their bets and dropping off money.

Their apartment was in a mixed neighborhood, where Ella made friends easily. She considered herself more of a tomboy, and often joined in the neighborhood games of baseball. Sports aside, she enjoyed dancing and singing with her friends, and some evenings they would take the train into Harlem and watch various acts at th

Fitzgerald was born April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia. Her youth was one of struggle and loss. She never knew her father and her mother died when she was only 15. A rudderless Ella struggled in school and at home and experienced a period of delinquency and homelessness. But just two years after losing her mother, in 1934 she began to appear on stage, competing in Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She was so successful that she was soon hired by drummer and bandleader Chick Webb to travel with his band. The pay was $12.50 a week.

While performing with Webb, Fitzgerald made several important recordings with Decca Records, whose talent dominated the jukebox offerings with the likes of the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby. One of the recordings, Fitzgerald’s swinging version of the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” hit number one on the charts and propelled her to fame in 1938. The album sold over a million copies. With Webb’s death in 1939, when Fitzgerald was just 22, the band’s billing changed to “Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra” to reflect her draw as a star. Her popularity with crowds was immense. At the end of a performance at the New Rhythm Club in New Orleans in June 1940, an autograph-hungry audience nearly ripped Fitzgerald’s clothes off. Fitzgerald’s early recordings with Webb also had international reach. In August 1941, hundreds of requested copies of “The Muffin Man” were shipped to London as requested to help bolster the spirits of British citizens spending long hours in public bomb shelters during the Blitz.

But Fitzgerald’s popularity was sometimes hard to classify. Her style and appearance often fell outside of traditionally successful norms. The orchestra disbanded in 1941, and Ella began to perform with smaller vocal groups, including the Three Keys. She also started to incorporate different techniques and tunes, calling on bebop timing and scat vocals, in her performances and recordings, and straying beyond w

Biography

Ella Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia. Fitzgerald and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, and she loved dancing and singing, often catching shows at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Her primary exposure to music was through attending services with her family at the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and by listening to the jazz records her mother brought home for her. 

After her mother died in 1932, Fitzgerald went to go live with her aunt in Harlem, where she got in trouble with the law and was sent to a reform school. She faced terrible treatment at this school, and eventually escaped and found herself alone during the Great Depression. Fitzgerald began singing and performing on the streets of Harlem in order to make ends meet. In November 1934, seventeen-year-old Fitzgerald debuted in her first Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater. 

At 21 years old, she recorded hits that made her famous such as “Love and Kisses”, and “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” (1938), which remained on the pop charts for seventeen weeks. The 1940’s ushered in the bebop style of jazz; Fitzgerald adopted it and excelled. Her 1945 recording of “Flying Home” was described as one of the most influential jazz recordings of the decade. After gaining much fame from singing her own renditions of famous jazz songs, Fitzgerald began appearing on television shows like “The Bing Crosby Show,” "The Frank Sinatra Show," and "The Ed Sullivan Show." 

Fitzgerald became an international star, known as "The First Lady of Song." Despite her declining health, she continued performing, sometimes two shows a day in different cities. Aside from music, Fitzgerald was a child welfare advocate and regularly made donations to help disadvantaged youth. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan in 1987. She rec

American jazz singer (1917–1996)

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter and composer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, absolute pitch, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve, she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.

Fitzgerald also appeared in films and as a g