Ella Fitzgerald

Infobox musical artist
Name = Ella Fitzgerald

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Img_capt = photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1940
Background = solo_singer
Birth_name = Ella Jane Fitzgerald
Alias = First Lady of Song; Lady Ella
Born = birth date|mf=yes|1917|4|25
Newport News, Virginia, U.S.
Died = death date and age|mf=yes|1996|6|15|1917|4|25
Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Genre = Ballads, swing, traditional pop, vocal jazz
Occupation = Vocalist
Years_active = 1934-1993
Label = Capitol, Decca, Pablo, Reprise, Verve
URL = [http://ellafitzgerald.com/ www.EllaFitzgerald.com]

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. [cite web | url=http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?P=amg&sql=11:71r67ui0h0j3~T1 | title=Ella Fitzgerald | publisher=allmusic.com | author=Scott Yanow | accessdate=2007-03-16]

With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, 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. [cite web| url=http://www.vickiesmith.com/ella.htm | title=Dedicated To Ella | publisher=VickieSmith.com | author=Vickie Smith, Jazz Vocalist | accessdate=2007-03-16]

Over a recording career that lasted 57 years, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards, and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.

Biography

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald.cite book | first=Stuart | last=Nicholson | year=1993 | title=Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz | publisher=C. Scribner's Sons | location=New York | isbn=0-575-40032-3
For many years Fitzgerald's birthdate was thought to be on the same date one year later in 1918 — and is still listed as such in some sources — but research by Nicholson has established 1917 as the correct year of her birth.] The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, with Tempie's boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. As a child, Fitzgerald was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx. [Bernstein, Nina. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E7DA1539F930A15755C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2 "Ward of the State;The Gap in Ella Fitzgerald's Life"] , "The New York Times", June 23, 1996. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Her most recent biographer, Stuart Nicholson, has surmised that the authorities caught up with her and placed her in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale."]

In her youth, she 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."cite news | url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E4DC1E39F935A25755C0A960958260 |date=1996-06-16 | title=Ella Fitzgerald, the Voice of Jazz, Dies at 79 | author=Stephen Holden | publisher=The New York Times | accessdate=2008-04-06]

In 1932, her mother died from a heart attack.cite book | first=Stuart | last=Nicholson | year=1993 | title=Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz | publisher=C. Scribner's Sons | location=New York | isbn=0-575-40032-3
For many years Fitzgerald's birthdate was thought to be on the same date one year later in 1918 — and is still listed as such in some sources — but research by Nicholson has established 1917 as the correct year of her birth.] After staying with Da Silva for a short time, she was taken in by Tempie's sister, Virginia. Shortly afterward, Da Silva suffered a heart attack and died, and her sister Frances joined Ella at Virginia's home in New York City.

Following these traumas, Fitzgerald's 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.cite web | url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E6D81439F93AA25755C0A960958260 |date=1996-06-19 | title=Journal; How High the Moon | author=Frank Rich | publisher=The New York Times | accessdate=2008-04-06] After getting into trouble with the police, she was taken into custody and sent to a reform school. Eventually she escaped from the reformatory, and for a time was homeless.

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 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.cite news| url=http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9606/15/fitzgerald.obit/index.html |date=1996-06-15 | title=‘First Lady of Song’ passes peacefully, surrounded by family | author=Jim Moret | publisher=CNN | accessdate=2007-01-30]

Big-band singing

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 here for the first time. 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. Despite the rough crowd, she was a great success, and Webb hired her to travel with the band for $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. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 sides during her time with the orchestra, most of which, like "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", were "novelties and disposable pop fluff."

The Decca years

In 1942, Fitzgerald left the band to begin a solo career. Now signed to the Decca label, she had several popular hits, while recording with such artists as the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys.

With Decca's Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz, and appearing regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. Fitzgerald's relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels.

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 caused a major change 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."

Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" 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 be-bop recordings of "Oh, Lady be Good!" (1947) and "How High the Moon" were similarly popular, and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.

Perhaps responding to criticism, and under pressure from Granz (who felt that Fitzgerald was given unsuitable material to record during this period), her last years on the Decca label saw Fitzgerald recording a series of duets with pianist Ellis Larkins, released in 1950 as "Ella Sings Gershwin".

Move to Verve and mainstream success

Still performing at Granz's JATP concerts, by 1955, Fitzgerald left Decca, and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her.

Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman....felt that I should do other things, so he produced "The Cole Porter Songbook" with me. It was a turning point in my life."

"Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook", released in 1956, was the first of eight multi-album "Songbook" sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the "Great American Songbook". Fitzgerald's song selections ranged from standards to rarities, and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience.

"Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook" was the only "Songbook" on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks, and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues", and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald (the only "Songbook" track on which Fitzgerald does not sing).

The "Songbook" series ended up becoming the singer's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. "The New York Times" wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration."

A few days after Fitzgerald's death, "New York Times" columnist Frank Rich wrote that in the "Songbook" series Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis's contemporaneous integration of white and African-American soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians." Frank Sinatra was moved out of respect for Fitzgerald to block Capitol Records from re-releasing his own recordings in a similar, single composer vein.

Ella Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 and 1983, the albums being "Ella Loves Cole" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It", respectively. A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with Pablo Records, "Ella Abraça Jobim", featuring the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim.

While recording the 'Songbooks' and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers.

In the mid-1950s, Fitzgerald became the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo, after Marilyn Monroe had lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. The incident was turned into a play by Bonnie Greer in 2005.

There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics: "Ella at the Opera House" shows a typical JATP set from Fitzgerald, ' displays her vocal jazz canon, while ' is still one of her biggest selling albums; it includes a famous version of "Mack the Knife", on which she forgets the lyrics, but improvises magnificently to compensate.

Later years

Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1963 for $3 million, and in 1967 MGM failed to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Over the next five years, she flitted between several labels, namely Atlantic, Capitol and Reprise. A selection of her material at this time represent a departure from her typical jazz repertoire; for Capitol she recorded "Brighten the Corner", an album of hymns, "Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas", an album of traditional Christmas carols, "Misty Blue", a country and western-influenced album, and "30 by Ella", a series of six medleys that fulfilled her obligations for the label.

The surprise success of the 1972 album "Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72" led Granz to found Pablo Records, his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums for the label. Her years on Pablo documented the decline in her voice; "She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and her voice was harder, with a wider vibrato," one biographer wrote. Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993. [cite news | url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/31/nhonours931.xml | title=Sir Johnny up there with the Count and the Duke | publisher=Telegraph, UK | author=Hugh Davies | date=2005-12-31 | accessdate=2007-03-16]

Personal life

Fitzgerald married twice, though there is evidence that she may have married a third time. In 1941 she married Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer. 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, owing 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 labour in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.

Fitzgerald was also notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauza, 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. I think I do better when I sing."

Already blinded by the effects of diabetes, Fitzgerald had both her legs amputated in 1993 . In 1996 she died of the disease in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 79. She is interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Several of Fitzgerald's awards, significant personal possessions and documents were donated to the Smithsonian Institution, the library of Boston University, the Library of Congress, and the Schoenberg Library at UCLA.

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." [cite news | url=http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?res=9C00E2DB103AE73ABC4152DFBE66838E649EDE |date=19 Aug 1955 | title=Webb Plays the Blues | publisher=The New York Times | accessdate=2007-01-31]

Similar to another African-American jazz singer, Lena Horne, 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 also made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on the "The Frank Sinatra Show", and alongside Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé and many others. 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. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey.

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.

Discography

Collaborations

Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the guitarist Joe Pass, and the bandleaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
* Fitzgerald recorded three Verve studio albums with Armstrong, two albums of standards (1956's "Ella and Louis" and 1957's "Ella and Louis Again"), and a third album featured music from the Gershwin musical "Porgy and Bess". Fitzgerald also recorded a number of sides with Armstrong for Decca in the early 1950s.
* Fitzgerald is sometimes referred to as the quintessential swing singer, and her meetings with Count Basie are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald features on one track on Basie's 1957 album "One O'Clock Jump", while her 1963 album "Ella and Basie!" is remembered as one of her greatest recordings. With the 'New Testament' Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a young Quincy Jones, this album proved a respite from the 'Songbook' recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. Fitzgerald and Basie also collaborated on the 1972 album "Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72", and on the 1979 albums "Digital III at Montreux", "A Classy Pair" and "A Perfect Match".
* Fitzgerald and Joe Pass recorded four albums together toward the end of Fitzgerald's career. She recorded several albums with piano accompaniment, but a guitar proved the perfect melodic foil for her. Fitzgerald and Pass appeared together on the albums "Take Love Easy" (1973), "Easy Living" (1986), "Speak Love" (1983) and "Fitzgerald and Pass... Again" (1976).
* Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington recorded two live albums, and two studio albums. Her "Duke Ellington Songbook" placed Ellington firmly in the canon known as the Great American Songbook, and the 1960s saw Fitzgerald and the 'Duke' meet on the Côte d'Azur for the 1966 album "Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur", and in Sweden for "The Stockholm Concert, 1966". Their 1965 album "Ella at Duke's Place" is also extremely well received.

Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen over her long career. The trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, the guitarist Herb Ellis, and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, Oscar Peterson, Lou Levy, Paul Smith, Jimmy Rowles, and Ellis Larkins all worked with Ella mostly in live, small group settings.

Perhaps Fitzgerald's greatest unrealized collaboration (in terms of popular music) was a studio or live album with Frank Sinatra. The two appeared on the same stage only periodically over the years, in television specials in 1958 and 1959, and again on 1967's "A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim", a show that also featured Antonio Carlos Jobim. Pianist Paul Smith has said, "Ella loved working with [Frank] . Sinatra gave her his dressing room on "A Man and His Music" and couldn’t do enough for her." When asked, Norman Granz would cite "complex contractual reasons" for the fact that the two artists never recorded together. Fitzgerald's appearance with Sinatra and Count Basie in June 1974 for a series of concerts at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas was seen as an important impetus upon Sinatra returning from his self-imposed retirement of the early 1970s. The shows were a great success, and September of that year saw them gross $1,000,000 in two weeks on Broadway, in a triumvirate with the Count Basie Orchestra.

Awards, citations and honors

Tributes

Albums

Ann Hampton Callaway, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Patti Austin have all recorded albums in tribute to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album "To Ella with Love" (1996) features fourteen jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the album also features the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Bridgewater's album "Dear Ella" (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Fitzgerald during her career, including the pianist Lou Levy, the trumpeter Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, the double bassist Ray Brown. Bridgewater's following album, "Live at Yoshi's", was recorded live on April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st birthday. Patti Austin's album, "For Ella" (2002) features 11 songs most immediately associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated for a Grammy.

In 2007 "", was released, a tribute album recorded for the 90th anniversary of Fitzgerald's birth. It featured artists such as Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Ledisi, Dianne Reeves, Linda Ronstadt, and Lizz Wright, collating songs most readily associated with the "First Lady of Song".

The folk singer Odetta's album "To Ella" (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Fitzgerald's long serving accompanist Tommy Flanagan affectionately remembered Fitzgerald on his album "Lady be Good...For Ella" (1994).

Fitzgerald is also referred to on the 1987 song "Ella, elle l'a" by French singer France Gall, the 1976 Stevie Wonder hit "Sir Duke" from his album "Songs in the Key of Life", and the song "I Love Being Here With You", written by Peggy Lee and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording of "Mack the Knife" from his album "L.A. Is My Lady" (1984), includes a homage to some of the song's previous performers, along the lines dreamed up on by Fitzgerald on her 1960 album "", he includes 'Lady Ella' herself.

USPS stamp and Yonkers statue

There is a statue of Fitzgerald in Yonkers, the city in which she grew up. It is located south of the main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station. On January 10, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own 39 cent postage stamp which was released in April 2007; the stamp was part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.

Quotes

Quotations about Fitzgerald

* "Man, woman or child, Ella is the greatest of them all." - Bing Crosby
* "I call her the High Priestess of Song." - Mel Tormé
*"I didn't realize our songs were so good until Ella sang them." - Ira Gershwin
*"She had a vocal range so wide you needed an elevator to go from the top to the bottom. There's nobody to take her place." - David Brinkley
*"Her artistry brings to mind the words of the maestro, Mr. Toscanini, who said concerning singers, 'Either you're a good musician or you're not.' In terms of musicianship, Ella Fitzgerald was beyond category." - Duke Ellington
*"She was the best there ever was. Amongst all of us who sing, she was the best." - Johnny Mathis
*"She made the mark for all female singers, especially black female singers, in our industry." - Dionne Warwick
*"Her recordings will live forever... she'll sound as modern 200 years from now." - Tony Bennett
*"Play an Ella ballad with a cat in the room, and the animal will invariably go up to the speaker, lie down and purr." - Geoffrey Fidelman (author of the Ella Fitzgerald biography, "First Lady of Song")

Quotations of Fitzgerald

* "I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns."
* "It isn't where you came from, it's where you're going that counts."
* "Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."
* "The only thing better than singing is more singing."
* "Some kids in Italy call me 'Mama Jazz'; I thought that was so cute. As long as they don't call me 'Grandma Jazz.'"
* "Oh, I have gobs and gobs of ideas, but... well, you dream things like that, and that's what these are, you know—my day dreams."
* "I sing like I feel."
* "A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside... I'm going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do."
* "I know I'm no glamour girl, and it's not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I've got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing."
* "Coming through the years, and finding that I not only have just the fans of my day, but the young ones of today—that's what it means, it means it was worth all of it."
* "Once, when we were playing at the Apollo, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don't know if it was the right thing to do—I asked her for her autograph."
* "I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don't have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you'll understand."

Further reading

Biographies

*Nicholson, Stuart. (1996) "Ella Fitzgerald". Gollancz. ISBN 0575400323

Criticism

*Gourse, Leslie. (1998) "The Ella Fitzgerald Companion: Seven Decades of Commentary". Music Sales Ltd. ISBN 0028646258

Discographies

*Johnson, J. Wilfred. (2001) "Ella Fitzgerald: A Complete Annotated Discography". McFarland & Co Inc. ISBN 0786409061

References

Reflist|2

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*

External links

* [http://ellafitzgerald.altervista.org/discography_gen.htm Ella Fitzgerald Complete Discography]
* [http://www.jazz.com/dozens/the-dozens-twelve-essential-ella-fitzgerald-performances Ella Fitzgerald: Twelve Essential Performances] by Stuart Nicholson ( [http://www.jazz.com Jazz.com] ).
* [http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9708/ella.html Ella Fitzgerald at the Library of Congress]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1328 Ella Fitzgerald's Gravesite]
* [http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/ Official Web Site of Ella Fitzgerald]
* [http://www.redsugar.com/ella.html Redsugar's Ella page]
* [http://www.pitt.edu/~atteberr/jazz/articles/ella.html 'Remembering Ella' by Phillip D. Atteberry]
* [http://www.thepeaches.com/music/ella/ Todd's Ella Fitzgerald Lyrics Page]
* [http://www.spingal.plus.com/ella Ella Swings Gently - The Ella Fitzgerald Pages]
* [http://vervemusicgroup.com/docs/ella/campaign/index2.htm Ella Fitzgerald Tribute CD Video Footage]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E7DA1539F930A15755C0A960958260 New York Times article on Ella's early years]

Persondata
NAME=Fitzgerald, Ella
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Lady Ella, The First Lady of Song
SHORT DESCRIPTION=American jazz singer
DATE OF BIRTH=April 25, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH=Newport News, West Virginia
DATE OF DEATH=June 15, 1996
PLACE OF DEATH=Beverly Hills, California