Ella Fitzgerald - 'The First Lady of Song'

Ella Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1918, in Newport News, Virginia, but she spent her youth in Yonkers, New York City. She began singing at her local church as a child and received her musical education in public schools. An orphan at just fifteen she was cared for by her aunt in Harlem, a black neighbourhood in New York that was rich with jazz music.

At sixteen, she received her first big break at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, when she won an amateur-night contest. Soon after she became a recording star, and her own composition "A-tisket, A-tasket" in 1938 was such a hit that the song became her trademark for many years after.


By 1940 Fitzgerald was recognised throughout the music world as a vocal wonder—a singer with clarity of tone, flexibility of range, fluency of rhythm, and, above all, a talent for improvisation (to make up without practice) that was equally effective on ballads and faster tunes. Ella was not only one of the pioneers of scat singing, but she was also a down-to-earth singer whose harmonic variations were always unforced. She was a supreme melodist who never let herself get in the way of any song she sang.

Twice married, the first to Bernie Kornegay in 1941, was annulled two years later. The second, to bassist Ray Brown in 1948, ended in divorce in 1952. Ella died on June 15, 1996, at the age of seventy-eight. She left a legacy that will not be forgotten. In her lifetime she received fourteen Grammys, the Kennedy Center Award, as well as an honorary doctorate in music from Yale University. Ella Fitzgerald was one of the most exciting jazz singers of her time, her musical ability extending far beyond the borders of jazz.