Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer. During her 59-year singing career, she won 14 Grammy Awards, was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Ronald Reagan , and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush .

She is often referred to as the First Lady of Song , the Queen of Jazz , and Lady Ella . She is noted for her clarity of melody, perfect diction, phrasing and intonation, and ability to improvise.

Youth

Ella Fitzgerald was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in Newport News, Virginia . She was the product of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald. [ 1 ] Her parents separated shortly after her 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York to live with her boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Her half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in 1923.

In 1932, her mother died of a heart attack. Due to the shock, she failed in her studies and often skipped school. She was abused by her stepfather and was adopted by an aunt. [ 2 ] She worked as a lookout for a brothel and ran errands for mafia- affiliated lottery bosses . [ 3 ] When the authorities caught up with her, they first sent her to an orphanage in Riverdale, Bronx . Later, because the orphanage was overcrowded, she was transferred to a reform school for girls in Hudson, New York. She eventually escaped and lived on the streets for a while.

Career

On November 21, 1934, she began her singing career at the Apollo Theater in Harlem , New York. She then won the opportunity to audition for the theater’s “Amateur Nights” competition. She intended to compete in a dance act but was intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, so she switched to singing. She won first prize and a prize of $25. [ 4 ]

In January 1935, Ella Fitzgerald had the opportunity to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw Band at the Harlem Opera House. There, she met bandleader and drummer Chick Webb . Webb had hired Charlie Linton as a singer in the band and did not want Ella because she was “slow and unkempt, a diamond in the rough”. [ 5 ] Webb gave her a chance to test out his band when they played for a dance at Yale University .

By 1935, she was singing regularly with Webb’s band at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. With them, she recorded many popular songs such as “Love and Kisses” and “(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)”. But it was not until 1938, with a youthful song called “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”, which she co-wrote, that she became widely known. Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed “Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra”, with Ella as leader. In 1942, she left the band to begin an independent career. Signed to Decca, she had many popular hits while recording with such famous artists as the Ink Spots , Louis Jordan , the Delta Rhythm Boys .

Through her manager Milt Gabler of Decca, Ella began collaborating with jazz impresario Norman Granzas, appearing regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts. Her relationship with Granzas was further strengthened when he became her manager. Her 1945 recording “Flying Home” was later described by the New York Times as “one of the most influential vocal-jazz recordings of the decade”. Her bebop “Oh, Lady be Good!” (1947) was similarly popular and established her as a leading jazz singer.

Ella continued to perform in Granz’s JATP concerts until 1955. She left Granz and Decca and founded Verve Records. She later referred to this period as a strategic turning point. The album “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook”, released in 1956, was the first of eight albums in the Songbook series that Ella would record for Verve between 1956 and 1964. The Songbook series was critically acclaimed and commercially successful, and it remains her most notable contribution to American culture.

Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1963 for $3 million. In 1967, MGM failed to renew Ella’s contract. Over the next five years, she bounced between three record labels: Atlantic, Capitol, and Reprise. With Capitol, she recorded the hymn album “Brighten the Corner,” “Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas,” an album of traditional Christmas carols, “Misty Blue,” a country-western album, and “30 by Ella.”

In 1972, the unexpected success of her album “Jazz at Santa Monica Civic ’72” led Granz to found Pablo Records, his first independent label since selling the Verve. Ella recorded about 20 albums for the label. The 1974 live album “Ella in London” with Tommy Flanagan (piano), Joe Pass (guitar), Keter Betts (bass) and Bobby Durham (drums) is one of her best. Suffering from health problems, Ella Fitzgerald made her final recordings in 1991. She gave her last public performance in 1993. That same year, she established her eponymous charity, which raises money for books for at-risk 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren and supports people in difficult circumstances.

List of movies and TV shows

Ella Fitzgerald was married at least twice and there is evidence that she may have married a third time.

In 1941, she married Benny Kornegay, a stevedore and convicted drug dealer. The marriage ended after two years.

She married for a second time in December 1947, to the famous bassist Ray Brown, whom she had met the year before while touring with Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Together they adopted the 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 of Ella’s half-sister Frances, whom they named Ray Brown Jr. The couple divorced in 1953, citing work pressures. They continued to perform together, however.

In July 1957, Reuters reported that Ella Fitzgerald had secretly married a young Norwegian named Thor Einar Larsen in Oslo . She had even begun to plan for the future while furnishing an apartment in Oslo. But the relationship was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months of hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he was engaged.

Achievements and final stages of life

Ella Fitzgerald has won 14 Grammy Awards, including Best Jazz Vocal, Best Pop Vocal, Best Performance, Best Album and Lifetime Achievement . She has also been awarded many other prestigious titles and awards such as:

• Honorary Chairman of the Martin Luther King Foundation (1967)
• Bing Crosby Lifetime Achievement Award (1967)
• Kennedy Center Medal of Honor (1979)
• Lord & Taylor Rose Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music (1980)
• National Medal of Arts (1987)
• French Order of Arts and Letters (1990)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Honorary Doctorates from Harvard , Yale , Dartmouth , Maryland Eastern Shore , Howard and Princeton Universities

In her later years, Ella became blind as a result of diabetes . In 1993, she had both legs amputated. In 1996, she died of illness in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 79. She was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Documents about her career and achievements are kept at the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution . Some other personal documents are stored at major libraries such as the Library of Congress , the Schlesinger Library of Harvard University , and the Schoenberg Library of the University of California .