The dazzling legend of jazz music: Who is Ella Fitzgerald?

Fitzgerald, who always had an artistic spirit within her, wanted to be a dancer when she was little, and she took advantage of her chance to realize this dream by participating in dance competitions until she was 15 years old. After losing her mother in a car accident at the age of 15, she started living with her aunt in Harlem.

Ella, who became homeless after a while, participated in many singing competitions while singing on the streets of Harlem. Her real luck came when she won the competition at the amateur night at the Appolo Theater and won first place. Fitzgerald managed to attract the attention of the famous jazz drummer Chick Webb. At first, no matter how beautiful Ella's voice was, he was not very keen on the idea of ​​adding her to her orchestra because she came "from the streets", but he gave Ella a chance. Singing her own interpretation of "A-Tisket A-Tisket", which is actually a lullaby, Ella made both Chick Webb's orchestra and her own star shine from that day on.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

Fitzgerald, who played with Chick Webb's orchestra for several years, took over the orchestra after Chick passed away. While she continued to increase the fame of both the orchestra and herself with each passing day, she decided to embark on a solo career that would last throughout her life in 1942.

After Norman Granz took over as Fitzgerald's manager in the 1950s, the name Ella Fitzgerald became known to everyone. From 1956 to 1964, Fitzgerald published a series of 19-volume "songbooks", including more than 250 exclusive songs from artists such as Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Johnny Mercer. commented.

After fighting diabetes throughout her life, she was amputated from both legs below the knee in 1993 and continued her life in a wheelchair. Fitzgerald, who got tired of the days she spent in the hospital due to other health problems and wanted to spend her last days at home with her son and grandchild, passed away in 1996 at the age of 79.

Important details from Ella Fitzgerald's life story

Ironically, Fitzgerald's passion for the stage began not with singing, but with dancing. Describing that period, she said, “I never saw myself as a singer." She does not hesitate to reveal her connection with dance by saying, "My real passion was dancing." Influenced by the Lindy Hop craze that intensified in Harlem in the late 1920s, Fitzgerald performed Lindy Hop at home by imitating the dancers and secretly went to shows with her friends during lunch hours in middle school. Fitzgerald's childhood was spent with radio and gramophone. This period, when music became freely accessible to the masses for the first time, created a revolution in popular music, and in this context, changed and transformed people's lives forever.

Born in 1917 to a poor family in Newport News, Virginia, her father abandoned them when she was three years old. In addition to the family difficulties they face, the Fitzgerald family, like many black people at that time, joins the great migration and moves north to New York in search of a better life. Living in Yonkers is challenging, of course, but Fitzgerald chooses to pursue her uncontrollable passions. Having spent her childhood and teenage years singing and dancing, Fitzgerald is almost sure that she will shine like a star one day.

To make a living, Fitzgerald began singing and performing on the streets of Harlem; In November 1934, when she was only 14 years old, she performed for the first time in a competition at the Apollo Theatre. She feels at home on stage while performing Hoagy Carmichael's song Judy. Even though she came first in the competition, the theater does not consider her worthy of the award. The winner of the competition is planned to perform at the Apollo Theater for a week, but this opportunity is not offered to Fitzgerald because she thinks her appearance is inappropriate. This situation does not prevent Fitzgerald from participating in other competitions, and her efforts ultimately open the door she dreams of.

Unable to achieve the visibility she aimed for until the summer of 1938, Fitzgerald attracted attention with a 19th-century nursery rhyme adapted to the present day by Van Alexander, who regularly presented arrangements to Chick Webb. A-Tisket A-Tisket captures listeners in the right place and at the right time, rising to number 1 on the charts. The strong influence of Armstrong and other black jazz artists on Fitzgerald became evident when the artist began performing with trumpeter and composer Dizzy Gillespie and other bebop artists of the 1940s.

Jimmy Rowles, who was Fitzgerald's pianist from time to time since the 1950s and accompanied her regularly in the 1980s, describes the artist's relationship with music as follows: “You would find her either singing or listening to music. The music seemed to revolve around her. The music was inside her. Even while walking on the street, it was as if she left notes around her.

Having released more than two hundred albums sold more than forty million albums, and won thirteen Grammy awards, making it to the top of the charts, Fitzgerald lived only to sing. Music was the focus of her existence, and it defined and shaped the music she performed in all her glory for seventy years.