Born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common law marriage between William and Temperance Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, with Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald’s half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923.P/E
BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Full Name: Ella Jane Fitzgerald
Description: Vocalist, Actress, USA
Known For: “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” (Hit Song) 1938
Instruments: Voice
Music Styles: Blues, Easy Listening, Jazz
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 25th April 1917
Location Born: Newport News, Virginia, United States of America
Date Died: 15th June 1996
Location Died: Beverly Hills, California, United States of America
Memorial: She is interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
CONTACT DETAILS
Web Site:
YOUTUBE VIDEO
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Ella Fitzgerald
An American jazz singer.
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz vocalist with a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6). Often referred to as the “First Lady of Song,” the “Queen of Jazz” and “Lady Ella,” she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 60-year recording career, she sold 40 million copies of her 70-plus albums, won 14 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
Early life
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald. Her parents were unmarried, and they had separated within a year of her birth. With her mother’s new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph Da Silva, Ella and her mother moved to the city of Yonkers, in Westchester County, New York, as part of the first Great Migration of African Americans. Initially living in a single room, her mother and Da Silva soon found jobs and Ella’s half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, then a predominantly poor Italian area. At the age of six, Fitzgerald began her formal education, and moved through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School from 1929.
Fitzgerald had been passionate about dancing from third grade, being a fan of Earl “Snakehips” Tucker in particular, and would perform for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime. Fitzgerald and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. The church would have provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in formal music making, and she may have also had piano lessons during this period if her mother could afford it.
In her youth, Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the 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, her mother died from a heart attack. Following this trauma, Fitzgerald’s grades dropped dramatically, and she frequently skipped school. Abused by her stepfather, she ran away to her aunt and, at one point, worked as a lookout at a bordello and also with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, Bronx. However, when the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, a state reformatory. Eventually she escaped and for a time she was homeless.
Early career
She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York.She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and 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 Connee Boswell. She sang Boswell’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, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb there. Webb had already hired 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.” Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University. 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 and her Famous Orchestra with Ella taking on the role of nominal bandleader. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 songs with the orchestra before it broke up in 1942, “the majority of them novelties and disposable pop fluff”.
Her 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.” Her bebop recording of “Oh, Lady Be Good!” (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.
Film and television
In her most notable screen role, Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in Jack Webb’s 1955 jazz film Pete Kelly’s Blues. The film costarred Janet Leigh and singer Peggy Lee. Even though she had already worked in the movies (she had sung briefly in the 1942 Abbott and Costello film Ride ‘Em Cowboy), she was “delighted” when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, and, “at the time….considered her role in the Warner Brothers movie the biggest thing ever to have happened to her.” Amid The New York Times pan of the film when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, “About five minutes out of ninety-five suggest the picture this might have been. Take the ingenious prologue … or take the fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a few spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with her strong mobile features and voice.” Fitzgerald’s race precluded major big-screen success. After Pete Kelly’s Blues, she appeared in sporadic movie cameos, in St. Louis Blues (1958), and Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960). Much later, she appeared in the 1980s television drama The White Shadow.
She made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on The Frank Sinatra Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and alongside other greats Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and many others. She was also frequently featured on The Ed Sullivan Show. Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the “Three Little Maids” song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta The Mikado alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore’s weekly variety series in 1963. A performance at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters’ television program Music, Music, Music.
Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, her most memorable being an ad for Memorex. In the commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass while being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape. The tape was played back and the recording also broke the glass, asking: “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” She also starred in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing and scatting to the fast-food chain’s longtime slogan, “We do chicken right!” Her final commercial campaign was for American Express, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz
Later life and death
In 1985, Fitzgerald was hospitalized briefly for respiratory problems, in 1986 for congestive heart failure, and in 1990 for exhaustion. In 1993, she had to have both of her legs amputated below the knee due to the effects of diabetes. Her eyesight was affected as well.
In 1996, tired of being in the hospital, she wished to spend her last days at home. Confined to a wheelchair, she spent her final days in her backyard of her Beverly Hills mansion on Whittier, with her son Ray and 12 year old granddaughter Alice. “I just want to smell the air, listen to the birds and hear Alice laugh,” she reportedly said. On her last day, she was wheeled outside one last time, and sat there for about an hour. When she was taken back in, she looked up with a soft smile on her face and said, “I’m ready to go now.” She died in her home on June 15, 1996 at the age of 79. A few hours after her death, the Playboy Jazz Festival was launched at the Hollywood Bowl. In tribute, the marquee read: “Ella We Will Miss You.” Her funeral was private, and she was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Personal life
Fitzgerald married at least twice, and there is evidence that she may have married a third time. In 1941, she married Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The marriage was annulled after two years.
Her second marriage, in December 1947, was to the famous bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie’s band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald’s half-sister, Frances, whom they christened Ray Brown, Jr. With Fitzgerald and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by her aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953, bowing to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue to perform together.
In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment in Oslo, but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.
Fitzgerald was also notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauzá, who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with Chick Webb, remembered that “she didn’t hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music….She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself to herself, for the gig.” When, later in her career, the Society of Singers named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, “I don’t want to say the wrong thing, which I always do but I think I do better when I sing.”
Fitzgerald was a quiet but ardent supporter of many charities and non-profit organizations, including the American Heart Association and the City of Hope Medical Center. In 1993, she established the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.
Albums include.
DECCA RECORDS
Pure Ella (originally Ella Sings Gershwin) – 1950
Souvenir Album – 1950
Lullabies of Birdland – 1954
Songs in a Mellow Mood – 1954
For Sentimental Reasons – 1955
Miss Ella Fitzgerald & Mr Gordon Jenkins Invite You to Listen and Relax – 1955
Sweet and Hot – 1955
The First Lady of Song – 1955
VERVE RECORDS
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook – 1956
Ella and Louis (with Louis Armstrong) – 1956
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Songbook – 1956
Ella and Louis Again (with Louis Armstrong) – 1957
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook (with Duke Ellington) – 1957
Ella at the Opera House (Live) – 1957
Like Someone in Love – 1957
Porgy and Bess (with Louis Armstrong) – 1957
Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday at Newport (Live) – 1958
Ella Swings Lightly – 1958
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook – 1958
Get Happy! – 1959
Ella Fitzgerald Sings Sweet Songs for Swingers – 1959
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook – 1959
Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife (Live) – 1960
Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas – 1960
Hello, Love – 1960
Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs from Let No Man Write My Epitaph (Available on CD as The Intimate Ella) – 1960
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook – 1961
Ella in Hollywood (Live) – 1961
Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! – 1961
Ella Returns to Berlin (Live) – 1991
Rhythm Is My Business – 1962
Ella Swings Brightly with Nelson – 1962
Ella Swings Gently with Nelson – 1962
Ella Sings Broadway – 1963
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Songbook – 1963
Ella and Basie! (with Count Basie) – 1963
These Are the Blues – 1963
Hello, Dolly! – 1964
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Songbook – 1964
Ella at Juan-Les-Pins (Live) – 1964
Ella at Duke’s Place (with Duke Ellington) – 1965
Ella in Hamburg (Live) – 1965
Whisper Not – 1966
Ella and Duke at the Cote D’Azur (Live) (with Duke Ellington)- 1966
Sunshine of your Love (Live) – 1969
Ella in Rome: The Birthday Concert (Live) (Recorded in 1958) – 1988
Ella Fitzgerald live at Mister Kelly’s (Live) (Released in 1958)- 2007
CAPITOL RECORDS
Brighten the Corner – 1967
Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas – 1967
30 by Ella – 1968
Misty Blue – 1968
REPRISE RECORDS
Ella – 1969
Things Ain’t What They Used to Be – 1972
ATLANTIC RECORDS
Ella Loves Cole (Released on the Pablo label as Dream Dancing) – 1972
COLUBIA RECORDS
Newport Jazz Festival: Live at Carnegie Hall (Live) 1973
PABLO RECORDS
The Stockholm Concert, 1966 (Live) (with Duke Ellington) – 1966
Ella in Budapest, Hungary (Live) – 1970
Ella à Nice (Live)- 1971
Jazz at Santa Monica Civic ’72 (Live) – 1972
Take Love Easy (with Joe Pass)- 1973
Fine and Mellow (Released in 1979) (Live) – 1974
Ella and Oscar (with Oscar Peterson) Montreux ’75 (Live) – 1975
Fitzgerald and Pass… Again (with Joe Pass) – 1976
Montreux ’77 (Live)- 1977
Lady Time – 1978
Dream Dancing – 1979
Digital III at Montreux (Live) – 1979
A Classy Pair (with Count Basie) – 1979
A Perfect Match (Live) (with Count Basie) – 1979
Ella Abraça Jobim – 1982
The Best Is Yet to Come – 1982
Speak Love – (with Joe Pass) – 1983
Nice Work If You Can Get It (with André Previn)- 1983
Easy Living (with Joe Pass) – 1986
All That Jazz – 1989
Sophisticated Ldy (Live) (with Joe Pass) – (recorded in 1975)-2001
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia