Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz vocalist, 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, 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 in 1939, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Fitzgerald's 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, Fitzgerald recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.
Fitzgerald also appeared in films and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century. Outside her solo career, Fitzgerald created music with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots. These partnerships produced songs such as "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Cheek to Cheek", "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)". In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, Fitzgerald gave her last public performance. Three years later, Fitzgerald died at age 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included 14 Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, the NAACP's inaugural President's Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia. She was the daughter of William Ashland Fitzgerald, a transfer wagon driver from Blackstone, Virginia, and Temperance Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's parents were unmarried but lived together in the East End section of Newport News for at least two and a half years after she was born. In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald's mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph da Silva, moved to Yonkers, New York. Her half-sister, Frances da Silva, was born in 1923. By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, a poor Italian area in the Nodine Hill neighborhood. Fitzgerald began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929.
Fitzgerald and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. The church provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music. Starting in third grade, Fitzgerald loved dancing and admired Earl Snakehips Tucker. She performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime.
Fitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters. She loved the Boswell Sisters' 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."
In 1932, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Fitzgerald's stepfather took care of Fitzgerald until April 1933 when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. This seemingly swift change in her circumstances, reinforced by what Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson describes as rumors of "ill treatment" by her stepfather, leads him to speculate that da Silva might have abused her.
Fitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. Fitzgerald worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. She never talked publicly about this time in her life. When the authorities caught up with Fitzgerald, she was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale in The Bronx. When the orphanage proved too crowded, Fitzgerald was moved to the New York Training School for Girls, a state reformatory school in Hudson, New York.
While Fitzgerald seems to have survived during 1933 and 1934 in part by singing on the streets of Harlem, she debuted at age 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater. Fitzgerald had intended to go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated by a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead. Performing in the style of Connee Boswell, Fitzgerald sang "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection" and won first prize. She won the chance to perform at the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of her disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part of her prize.
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. Later that year, she was introduced to drummer and bandleader Chick Webb by Bardu Ali. Although "reluctant to sign her...because she was gawky and unkempt, a 'diamond in the rough,'" after some convincing by Ali, Webb offered Fitzgerald the opportunity to test with his band at a dance at Yale University.
Met with approval by both audiences and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb's orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group's performances at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. She recorded several hit songs, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)". However, it was Fitzgerald's 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought Fitzgerald public acclaim. "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a major hit on the radio and was also one of the biggest-selling records of the decade.
Webb died of spinal tuberculosis on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, with Fitzgerald taking on the role of bandleader. Fitzgerald and the band recorded for Decca and appeared at the Roseland Ballroom, where they received national exposure on NBC radio broadcasts.
Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 songs with Webb's orchestra between 1935 and 1942. In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight.
In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in the band, Fitzgerald started to work as lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July, her band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia. While working for Decca Records, Fitzgerald had hits with Bill Kenny & the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys. Producer Norman Granz became her manager in the mid-1940s after she began singing for Jazz at the Philharmonic, a concert series begun by Granz.
With the demise of the swing era and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled: "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."
Fitzgerald's 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" arranged by Vic Schoen would later be 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." Fitzgerald's bebop recording of "Oh, Lady Be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.
In July 1954, Fitzgerald made her first tour of Australia for the Australian-based American promoter Lee Gordon. This was the first of Gordon's famous "Big Show" promotions and the "package" tour also included Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw and comedian Jerry Colonna.