She won the chance to perform at the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of her disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part of her prize. Performing in the style of Connee Boswell, she sang “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection” and won first prize. She had intended to go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated by a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead. While she seems to have survived during 19 in part from singing on the streets of Harlem, Fitzgerald made her most important debut at age 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater. When the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls, a state reformatory school in Hudson, New York. When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale in the Bronx. She never talked publicly about this time in her life. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. This seemingly swift change in her circumstances, reinforced by what Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson describes as rumors of “ill treatment” by her stepfather, leaves him to speculate that Da Silva might have abused her.įitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. Her stepfather took care of her until April 1933 when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. In 1932, when Fitzgerald was fifteen, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. She loved the Boswell Sisters’ 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.” The church provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music.įitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. She performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime. Starting in third grade, Fitzgerald loved dancing and admired Earl Snakehips Tucker. She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929. By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, a poor Italian area. Her half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald’s mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph Da Silva, moved to Yonkers, in Westchester County, New York. Her parents were unmarried but lived together in the East End section of Newport News for at least two and a half years after she was born. Early lifeįitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia.She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Henry. Her accolades included fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as “Dream a Little Dream of Me”, “Cheek to Cheek”, “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall”, and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”. While Fitzgerald appeared in movies and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.Īfter a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Ella Jane Fitzgerald (Ap– June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella.
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