Ella Fitzgerald biography
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as "Lady Ella", the "Queen of Scat" and the "First Lady of Song", was an American jazz vocalist.
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.
Over a recording career that lasted 59 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.
Early Life
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. 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.
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."
In 1932, her mother died from a heart attack 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 Harlem Opera House 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 Connee Boswell. She sang Connee Boswell's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection", a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of US$25.00.
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