Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald was called the “first lady of song,” a title that still holds true today through her recordings. Born in 1918, Fitzgerald’s break took place at the legendary Apollo Theatre, where in 1934 she won an amateur singing contest. This led directly to a one-night gig with Chick Webb’s orchestra, which in turn led to her first long-term musical relationship. By 1937, half of Webb’s recordings featured Fitzgerald. In 1938, the song “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” brought Webb and Fitzgerald their first hit record. When Webb died in 1939, Fitzgerald became manager of the orchestra until 1941, when she disbanded the group, and began a solo career. For Norman Granz’s Verve label, Fitzgerald sang the Great American Songbooks; these recordings of the late fifties and early sixties are still the standard. Fitzgerald was a jazz singer who was able to adapt her style to fit the song and the orchestra. Touring with Dizzy Gillespie, Fitzgerald hooked into his be-bop style and scat singing. Soon, no one was a better scat singer than Ella Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s stamp is heard throughout the songs of Harold Arlen, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart; and with the orchestras of Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, and Benny Goodman, amongst so many others. Fourteen Grammys, the National Medal of Arts Award, France’s Commander of Arts and letters, the Medal of Freedom Award bestowed by President Bush in 1992, and the Ella Fitzgerald School of Performing Arts at the University of Maryland, are all honors that Fitzgerald collected as readily as she did fans. Ella Fitzgerald died in 1996.
