One of the greatest jazz singers ever to have stepped on stage, Ella Fitzgerald was also known as as the First Lady of Song and Queen of Jazz. With a career spanning over six decades, her flawless vocal technique, wide-ranging voice, and impeccable sense of rhythm and phrasing made her an icon in both jazz and popular music. Renowned for her scat singing and her interpretations of the Great American Songbook, Fitzgerald’s warm, clear tone and joyful stage presence captivated audiences worldwide, leaving a legacy that continues to inspire musicians today.
In her lifetime, Ella was considered the most popular female singer of her generation, winning 13 Grammy Awards and selling over 40 million albums. She worked with all the jazz greats of the age, from Duke Ellington (one of the best jazz pianists ever) and Count Basie to Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.
Who was Ella Fitzgerald?
Long before her death in 1996, Ella Fitzgerald was acknowledged as jazz’s vocal queen, a singer who commanded capacity audiences around the world and sold millions of records, inspiring devotion across the problematic divide between jazz and mainstream pop.
Her appeal, like her talent, knew no bounds. She was a performer sans frontières, esteemed by fellow musicians from bebop king, saxophonist Charlie Parker to Lieder master Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and adored by listeners whose tastes ranged from the super-charged thrill of improvised scat-singing to the agreeable pleasures of classic tunes from Broadway shows.
When was Ella Fitzgerald born?
Ella Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia.
What was Ella Fitzgerald's vocal style?
Even when Ella Fitzgerald sang sad songs, cheerfulness seemed on the verge of breaking in. Fans who preferred the moody splendour of Billie Holiday sometimes held this against her. It was said that when Billie sang ‘my man’s gone’, you knew he’d departed for good, while a similar line from Ella brought to mind somebody just popping out for a loaf of bread.
Though the comparison is distorted and unfair, it’s true that the root of Fitzgerald’s art was a boundless joie de vivre. Coupled with her vocal virtuosity, it touched millions of people around the world and made her a queen both of jazz music and pop.
Her buoyant outlook did not result from privileged circumstances. When she won a Harlem talent contest at the age of 17, the young Ella Fitzgerald was living on the streets and her shabby appearance put off prospective employers.
But drummer Chick Webb brought her into his band and their hit 1938 recording of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’ made her a star. The rhythmic nursery rhyme also established the Fitzgerald sound – girlish and swinging, with an immediate appeal. After Webb’s death in 1939 she took over the band until 1942 before going solo.
Besides her infectious way with pop songs, she revealed the kind of full-throttle skill at improvisation which was usually the domain of instrumentalists.
What were Ella Fitzgerald's most famous songs?
Ella's power as a scat singer bursts out from her 1945 recording of ‘Flying Home’, and ‘Smooth Sailing’ from 1951 shows her at home in rhythm and blues. Records like these make you understand why she was the brightest star of Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, and the one who would close the show. In 1956 Granz became her manager and proposed her series of Songbook albums, devoted to the pantheon of American popular composers.
But jazz lovers would always prefer the spectacle of Ella live, backed just with a rhythm section, storming through such impromptu masterpieces as ‘Mack the Knife’ and ‘How High the Moon’, recorded at a 1960 concert in Berlin. We’re left gasping at her energy, invention and exhilarating creativity; her songs enshrine a life committed to performing and a conviction that joy is the essence of jazz.
To paraphrase one of her greatest admirers, Duke Ellington, Fitzgerald was not just beyond category, but beyond categories, freely bestowing her talent on everything she touched. And while her talent shone through her peerless musicianship and awesome technique, it was also a matter of style, a kind of instinct for joy which permeated everything she did, and was her special gift.
Billie Holiday sang about love... Ella sang about happiness
Comparing her to her illustrious companions in the pantheon of jazz song, I once observed that Billie Holiday always sang about love while Sarah Vaughan sang about singing. But Ella Fitzgerald always sang about happiness. It gave her work a distinctive radiance throughout nearly six decades of performance, which made her unique in quality, longevity and eminence.
Seen from the landmark of her centenary, Fitzgerald’s unshakeable position at the head of her profession might seem almost pre-ordained, her life a long, sure progress to fulfilment. But her personal progress was much more fraught and uncertain.
She won them over the minute she started to sing
In 1934, at 17 years old, she was essentially homeless, living on Harlem streets, following the death of her mother. She’d always cherished dreams of being a dancer, and in November entered an amateur contest at the Apollo Theatre. At the last moment she decided to sing instead, because her second-hand clothes and men’s boots looked so shabby compared to her rivals.
At first, the Apollo crowd mocked this bulky, ungainly urchin, but, though racked with stage fright, she won them over the minute she started to sing, with the girlish purity of her voice and her vivacious rhythm. She won the contest too, and impressed one of New York’s most respected musicians, composer and alto saxophonist Benny Carter, who immediately took news of his discovery to one of New York’s premier big band leaders, Fletcher Henderson.
But Henderson wanted nothing to do with this shy, dowdy creature, and Fitzgerald fared no better with drummer bandleader Chick Webb, who took one look and told his would-be talent scout, ‘You’re not puttin’ that on my bandstand. No, no, no. Out!’
But Webb was persuaded to give Fitzgerald a chance and, as at the Apollo, that was all it took. In April, 1935 she opened with his band at the Savoy Ballroom and triumphed, impressing dancers and musicians alike with her vocal exuberance, charm and energy. It was as though she’d been born to an art she had really only arrived at by accident. As a band sideman recalled about her instantaneous effect, ‘She came into this business swinging.’
Turning a nursery rhyme into a swing-era classic
The teenager quickly became Chick Webb’s secret weapon, and one of her debut records, ‘Sing Me a Swing Song (And Let Me Dance)’ gave the band its first national hit. Seeing her potential, Webb began to make Fitzgerald’s vocals the core of the band’s appeal, giving both group and singer a huge boost in popularity.
The acme of Fitzgerald’s success was her chart-topping recording of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’, a catchy version of the nursery rhyme which she had created initially to amuse Webb on her visits to him in hospital, where the hunch-backed drummer was confined with tuberculosis. It became a swing-era classic, and, ironically, remained her greatest commercial hit throughout her long career.
That career took a sad turn in 1939, when Chick Webb died. He had been her mentor and guardian, and, in a typical act of loyalty to his memory and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald assumed leadership of the band, touring with it until 1942 when she left to begin a freelance career. While she recorded a wide variety of pop material, including novelties and calypso, she was also engrossed in the latest developments in jazz.
Perfect pitch, effortlessly lithe technique
As ever, it was the natural result of her interest in music and musicians. One of the godfathers of bebop, Dizzy Gillespie, was a long-time friend, and when he made his visits to the hotbed of bop experimentation – in such legendary clubs as Minton’s – Fitzgerald came too and not only absorbed but practised the radical new vocabulary. For her it was natural: ‘I wanted to do what he was doing… I learned by ear.’
The Fitzgerald ear has always been a thing of wonder, coupled with perfection of pitch and effortlessly lithe technique. All these elements began to come together in what would become her mature artistry through the 1940s. In 1945, she startled the jazz community – and everybody else – with her full throttle recording of ‘Flying Home’, a tour de force of scat singing, which proved she could create an improvised solo out of bebop syllables that could equal the exploits of a tenor man or trumpet player.
Her natural energy flowed with its usual fire, but enhanced by a new excitement at musical possibility, stretching out with her voice as instrument. At the same time, she was still peerless at bringing a song to life, with her warmth of tone and attack, her supple phrasing and sense of line.
Her array of attributes found their ideal framework in 1949 when the impresario Norman Granz invited her to join the all-star company of his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP). Granz took jazz around the world, arranging tours where the players, facilities and concerts were all first-class.
No one wanted to go up against Fitzgerald in top form
JATP was one of the great jazz brands, a guarantee of excitement and excellence, and Fitzgerald suited its image completely. Her buoyant vocals were a highlight of every show, and when it came to the climactic jam sessions which brought the evening to an ecstatic close, she was in her element – standing up toe-to-toe with the best improvisers in jazz and challenging them with her prodigious feats of scat, soaring over them with her three-octave range.
No one wanted to go up against Fitzgerald in top form, and she invariably brought the house down. Her own delight in performing was part of the pleasure of the experience. Shy off-stage, she came alive in the music, giving herself to the audience. She had no interest in being a star or celebrity, and her fellow musicians (who called her ‘Fitz’) cherished both her modesty and her talent.
Ella Fitzgerald and the Great American Songbook
Keenly aware of the extent of her ability and appeal, Norman Granz became Fitzgerald’s manager in 1956 and signed her to his record company, Verve. He launched her on an ambitious, almost unprecedented project which would make the maximum use of her gifts and take her out of a jazz niche to the vast musical mainstream – a series of albums devoted to the Great American Songbook, a catalogue of standards from Broadway and the movies, presented composer by composer.
The first to appear, in 1956, celebrated Cole Porter, with Fitzgerald and a big band performing such evergreens as ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’. When Granz took a copy of the record to the composer, Porter simply said, ‘My, what marvellous diction that girl has’.
But the record-buying public recognised Fitzgerald had that and much more. The Songbook series assumed classic status with each succeeding volume, hailed as a monument both to her singing and to the great tradition of American song, which is just how Fitzgerald would have wanted it.
‘I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them’
To Ella, the essence of her art, and her responsibility, lay in conveying the pleasure of this special union of melody and lyric. She made herself the vessel of that experience, and as the medium between composer and listener she was in a class by herself. In the words of Ira Gershwin, lyricist to his composer-brother George Gershwin, ‘I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.’
- George Gershwin: six of the best works
- Oscar Levant: film star - and greatest Gershwin pianist of his generation
It was that interpretative perfection plus her seamless ability to cross over into the improvisatory terrain of jazz which made her the unquestioned ‘First Lady of Song’. However, to some listeners, the very joie de vivre that Fitzgerald found in singing could be a drawback, limiting her capacity to plumb the darker emotions. Unlike her great contemporary Billie Holiday, for instance, who turned every song into an anguished portrait of the artist, drawing the listener in with every inflected, personalised phrase. Fitzgerald, by contrast, was all about projection, reaching out to share her pleasure.
'That happiness is her legacy'
From beginning to end, the pleasure of singing was her stock in trade. One of my own fondest memories is seeing Ella at the Royal Festival Hall in the 1980s, topping the bill in a superstar package with pianists Count Basie and Oscar Peterson. It was sheer delight watching this grandmotherly figure, then in her 60s, gleefully dominating the stage, piling up the verses on, of all things, ‘Old MacDonald’ and swinging like mad.
That happiness is her legacy, and its example and effect remain as enduring for classical singers as for those in the worlds of jazz and pop. It’s no surprise that Fitzgerald has been mentioned more often in this magazine’s monthly Music to my Ears feature than any other musician. Most recently, the Irish mezzo Tara Erraught declared, ‘I take Ella Fitzgerald with me everywhere’, as a sure remedy for any kind of stress. Which is exactly what enshrines her as the once and future First Lady of Song – pre-eminent in perpetuity.
When did Ella Fitzgerald die?
Ella Fitzgerald died on 15 June 1996, three years after retiring from the stage.
'She represents freedom': musicians salute Ella's enduring impact
Angel Blue (soprano)
‘Ella represents freedom: freedom in music, freedom of expression, freedom as an artist, as a singer and as a woman,' says soprano Angel Blue. 'She was always open to different ideas, looking for ways to make the music more exciting for audiences. I think the main reason why she was able to break down barriers is because she was true to who she was. People can sense that.
'I don’t remember when I first heard her music – it was always on in the house, especially at Christmas. It was when I was studying jazz theory in high school that I really became aware of her genius. I had this book of her music which tried to notate her scat singing. Things like that can’t ever truly be written down. That’s the magic of it.’
Tom Poster (pianist)
‘Ella has this incredible instinct for phrasing. Her voice has this incredible warmth of tone, which I think any instrumentalist or singer would want to emulate, and a natural virtuosity – she’s just brilliant as a technician. Beyond any of that there’s a directness to her art – a total honesty – and it feels like the music is just flowing through her. I turn to Ella’s music most when I want to feel happy, because there is so much joy which comes through in her voice and her art. It’s catching.’
Tara Erraught (mezzo-soprano)
‘If I’ve had a big day a work or a big rehearsal with the orchestra, the first thing I do when I come back is put on any album of hers. They bring me to a calmer place. Maybe it’s because I have been listening to them since I was a child, but her music has this amazing ability to transform your mood.
'She also had to make the move from soul music to what we now know as jazz. But she didn’t change the instrument, she didn’t change the colour, she just lived the music. And that is what all musicians should try to do.’
Noah Stewart (tenor)
‘My mum is from New Orleans so we always had jazz playing at home. It meant that, without even realising, I knew the sound of Ella’s voice. That sound has been there throughout my life, wherever I’ve travelled. It is always very strange to me that Ella didn’t consider herself to be a great musician. She was beloved by audiences – they never wanted her to leave the stage.
'Her ability to improvise was mind-blowing – she makes it sound effortless. Ella always said that the key to her ability was that she listened and was open to the moment. If we took that advice as human beings and listened, I think the world would be a much better place, somehow.’
What are the best Ella Fitzgerald albums?
Ken Burns Jazz Collection: The Definitive Ella Fitzgerald
Verve 549 0872
Ella Fitzgerald sings the Gershwin Songbook
Universal 539 7592 (3 discs)
Mack the Knife: Ella in Berlin
Essential Jazz Classics
EJC 55480
