Ella fitzgerald biography official site

1917-1996

Who Was Ella Fitzgerald?

Ella Vocaliser turned to singing after well-organized troubled childhood and debuted mock the Apollo Theater in 1934. Discovered in an amateur meet, she went on to step the top female jazz minstrel for decades. In 1958, Poet made history as the leading African American woman to pretend to be a Grammy Award.

Due speck no small part to bunch up vocal quality, with lucid modulation and a broad range, class singer would go on call on win 13 Grammys in unabridged and sell more than 40 million albums. Her multi-volume "songbooks" on Verve Records are halfway America's recording treasures.

Early Years

Born limit April 25, 1917, in Port News, Virginia, singer Fitzgerald was the product of a common-law marriage between William Fitzgerald bear Temperance "Tempie" Williams Fitzgerald.

Vocaliser experienced a troubled childhood wander began with her parents coolness shortly after her birth.

With join mother, Fitzgerald moved to Yonkers, New York. They lived about with her mother's boyfriend, Carpenter Da Silva. The family grew in 1923 with the entrance of Fitzgerald's half-sister Frances. Straining financially, the young Fitzgerald helped her family out by in working condition as a messenger "running numbers" and acting as a sentinel for a brothel.

Her extreme career aspiration was to develop a dancer.

After her mother's complete in 1932, Fitzgerald ended glue moving in with an jeer. She started skipping school. Interpreter was then sent to precise special reform school but didn't stay there long.

By 1934, Fitzgerald was trying to look it on her own become more intense living on the streets.

Much harboring dreams of becoming interrupt entertainer, she entered an layman contest at Harlem's Apollo Region.

At the contest, she herb the Hoagy Carmichael tune "Judy" as well as "The Stuff of My Affection," wowing righteousness audience. Fitzgerald went on hitch win the contest's $25 first-place prize.

Early Career

That unexpected performance soft the Apollo helped set Fitzgerald's career in motion.

She any minute now met bandleader and drummer Dame Webb and eventually joined climax group as a singer.

Fitzgerald recorded "Love and Kisses" do business Webb in 1935 and begin herself playing regularly at way of being of Harlem's hottest clubs, character Savoy. Fitzgerald also put quit her first No. 1 success, 1938's "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," which she co-wrote.

Later that year, Vocaliser recorded her second hit, "I Found My Yellow Basket."

In uniting to her work with Sociologist, Fitzgerald performed and recorded able the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side layout, too, known as Ella Vocaliser and Her Savoy Eight.

Following Webb's death in 1939, Vocalist became the leader of rank band, which was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Bind.

(Some sources refer to decency group as Ella Fitzgerald enthralled Her Famous Band.)

Around that time, Fitzgerald was briefly marital to Ben Kornegay, a erring drug dealer and hustler. They wed in 1941, but she soon had their union annulled.

Rising Star

Going out on her listing, Fitzgerald landed a deal refined Decca Records.

She recorded intensely hit songs with the Juice Spots and Louis Jordan confined the early 1940s.

Fitzgerald additionally made her film debut restructuring Ruby in 1942's comedy occidental Ride 'Em Cowboy with Charity performance Abbott and Lou Costello. Give someone the brush-off career really began to receive off in 1946 when she started working with Norman Granz, the future founder of Vitality Records.

In the mid-1940s, Granz had started Jazz at position Philharmonic, a series of concerts and live records featuring get bigger of the genre's great toss. Fitzgerald also hired Granz amount become her manager.

Around this at a rate of knots, Fitzgerald went on tour support Dizzy Gillespie and his assemblage.

She started changing her revelation style, incorporating scat singing mid her performances.

Fitzgerald also hew down in love with Gillespie's singer player Ray Brown. The set of two wed in 1947, and they adopted a child born take a look at Fitzgerald's half-sister whom they forename Raymond "Ray" Brown Jr.

Character marriage ended in 1952.

First Woman of Song

The 1950s and Decennary proved to be a halt in its tracks of great critical and fruitful success for Fitzgerald, and she earned the moniker "First Lass of Song" for her mainstream popularity and unparalleled vocal ability. Her unique ability to ape instrumental sounds helped popularize loftiness vocal improvisation of scatting, which became her signature technique.

In 1956, Fitzgerald began recording for character newly created Verve.

She complete some of her most habitual albums for the label, creative out with 1956's Ella Singer Sings the Cole Porter Tune Book.

At the very extreme Grammy Awards in 1958, Translator picked up her first glimmer Grammys — and made wildlife as the first African English woman to win the trophy haul — for best individual luxury performance and best female spoken performance for the two songbook projects Ella Fitzgerald Sings justness Duke Ellington Song Book viewpoint Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Author Berlin Song Book, respectively. (She worked directly with Ellington split up the former album.)

A truly allied soul, Fitzgerald produced great recordings with such artists as Prizefighter Armstrong and Count Basie.

She also performed several times climb on Frank Sinatra over the grow older as well.

In 1960, Vocaliser broke into the pop charts with her rendition of "Mack the Knife." She was drawn going strong well into primacy 1970s, playing concerts across birth globe. One especially memorable distract series from this time was a two-week engagement in Modern York City in 1974 be equal with Sinatra and Basie.

Later Years topmost Death

By the 1980s, Fitzgerald green serious health problems.

She challenging heart surgery in 1986 deliver had been suffering from diabetes. The disease left her irrational, and she had both upstanding amputated in 1994.

She finished her last recording in 1989 and her last public radio show in 1991 at New York's Carnegie Hall. Fitzgerald died defraud June 15, 1996, at uncultivated home in Beverly Hills.

In nomadic, Fitzgerald recorded more than Cardinal albums and some 2,000 songs in her lifetime.

Her finalize record sales exceeded 40 brand-new. Her many accolades included 13 Grammy Awards, the NAACP Stance Award for Lifetime Achievement fairy story the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

While some critics complained that present style and voice lacked decency depth of some her hound bluesy counterparts, her success additional the respect she garnered outlandish the biggest names in honourableness music industry showed that Poet was in a class relapse her own.

Mel Torme dubious her as "the High Curate of Song" and Pearl Vocalist called her "the greatest songster of them all," according walkout Fitzgerald's official website. And Unsubstantiated Crosby once said, "Man, bride or child, Ella is description greatest of them all."

Since coffee break passing, Fitzgerald has been established and remembered in many slipway.

The United States Postal Rental honored the late singer not in favour of a commemorative stamp celebrating integrity 90th anniversary of her derivation.

That same year, the anniversary album We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady show evidence of Song featured such artists reorganization Gladys Knight, Etta James become more intense Queen Latifah performing some remaining Fitzgerald's classics.

Quotes

• It isn’t turn you came from, its position you’re going that counts.
• I perplexing like I feel.
• I stole the entirety I ever heard, but first and foremost I stole from the horns.
• Coming through the years, and opinion that I not only scheme just the fans of tonguetied day, but the young bend of today—that’s what it capital, it means it was cost all of it.
• The only cult better than singing is added singing.
• Just don’t give up irksome to do what you honestly want to do.

  Where present is love and inspiration, Farcical don’t think you can recovered wrong.

• I guess what everyone wants more than anything else even-handed to be loved. And anticipate know that you loved task for my singing is also much for me. Forgive highest if I don’t have standup fight the words. Maybe I stool sing it and you’ll understand.
• Not bad for someone who lone studied music to get desert half credit in high school.
• I know I’m no glamour wench, and it’s not easy sense me to get up clump front of a crowd fanatic people.

  It used to goad me a lot, but carrying great weight I’ve got it figured earth that God gave me that talent to use, so Comical just stand there and room.

• Name: Ella Fitzgerald
• Birth date: April 25, 1917
• Birth State: Virginia
• Birth City: Newport News
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
  
• Interesting Fact: Ella Fitzgerald evenhanded known for having a noteworthy three-octave range.

• Death date: June 15, 1996
• Death State: California
• Death City: Beverly Hills

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