Ella fitzgerald.
First lady of songs
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as Lady Ella and the First Lady of Song, is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th Century.
With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, faultless phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered to have been one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook.
Over a recording career that lasted fifty-seven years, she was the winner of thirteen Grammy Awards, and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
Ella was born Ella Jane Fitzgerald in Newport News, Virginia, on April 25, 1917, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after Ella's birth and she and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, with Tempie's boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Ella's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923.
In her youth, Ella wanted to be a dancer, though she loved listening to jazz recordings of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the lead singer of the Boswell Sisters, 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."
In 1932, Ella's mother died from injuries received in a car accident. After staying with Da Silva for a short time, Ella was taken in by Tempie's sister, Virginia. Shortly afterward, Da Silva suffered a heart attack and died, and her sister Frances joined Ella in Virginia.
Following these traumatic events, Ella's academic grades dropped dramatically, and she frequently skipped school. At one point, she worked as a lookout at a bordello and also with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. After getting into trouble with the police, she was taken into custody and sent to a reform school. Eventually Ella escaped from the reformatory, and for a time was homeless.
She made her singing debut at seventeen on November 21, 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. Ella's name pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous "Amateur Nights." She had originally intended to go on stage and dance, but intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead, in the style of Connie Boswell. She sang Hoagy Carmichael's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection", a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of US$25.00.
In January 1935 she won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. Ella met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb here for the first time. Webb had already hired male singer Charlie Linton to work with the band, and was, The New York Times later wrote, "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a diamond in the rough."[4] Webb offered Ella the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University. Despite the tough crowd, Ella was a great success, and Webb hired her to travel with the band for US$12.50 a week.
She began singing regularly with Webb's Orchestra through 1935, at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald 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)" but it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.
Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" with Ella taking the role of bandleader. Ella recorded nearly 150 sides during her time with the orchestra, most of which, like "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", were "novelties and disposable pop fluff."