Ella Fitzgerald - 1917-1996
American Singer, Songwriter and Actress
Added to the album by Sandy, A Wonderful Woman
Man, Woman and Child. Ella Fitzgerald was the greatest.
Bing Crosby
Happy new year everyone! I hope many more of you will suggest additions to the Wonderful Women album in the coming year, I'm sure many great ladies will become known to us during the next twelve months.
The first Wonderful Woman subject this year is the inimitable Ella Fitzgerald, who always reminds me of another very Wonderful Woman, my lovely Grandma, June Smith, who introduced me to the joy of jazz as a child - a gift I will never be able to thank her enough for.
Like too many of the Wonderful Women featured before her, Ella's early years were traumatic, after the death of her mother when she was fourteen, Ella suffered abuse at the hands of her step-father. She had a number of brushes with the law, before being homed in an orphanage, she was later homeless for a period.
Ella's singing career began in New York when she was 17, she was soon recruited to join a band, with whom she recorded a number of records, after the death of the band's leader, the group became known as Ella and her Famous Orchestra. In 1942, Ella went solo and signed to Decca Records. Over the next fifty years of her life, Ella went on to record somewhere in the region of 90 albums (including, in my opinion, the best Christmas album ever recorded), win 13 Grammy awards (as well as a plethora of other industry accolades) and be awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She worked alongside some of jazz musics most loved artists, such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and rightfully became known as the Queen of Jazz.
Ella also appeared in film and on television, perhaps most famously in the 1955 jazz, gangster film Pete Kelly's Blues.
Her apparent equanimity and her clear pronunciation, which transcended race, ethnicity, class and age, made her a voice of profound reassurance and hope.
The New York Times
An unmistakable voice, the sultry scat sounds, the smooth coupled with such a subtle gravelly quality. Meloncholy but also beautifully joyful... Ella's sound was (and is) perfection.
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.
Ella Fitzgerald
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