Studio 1430

Fitzgerald, Ella

Ella was born in Newport News, Virginia in 1917 and orphaned at the age of 15, Her life was marked both by extreme highs and lows. Ella was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, one of the few orphanages at the time that accepted Afro-American children. From there, she was transferred to the New York State Training School for Girls, a reformatory at which State investigations later revealed widespread physical abuse. Having escaped from the reformatory, Ella was literally living in the streets of Harlem when Webb discovered her. She was married twice, but both marriages ended in divorce.

A diabetic for many years, the disease compromised her vision as well as her circulatory system before taking her life. As an artist, however, Ella achieved legendary success in a career. Despite never having received formal vocal training. Ella’s technique and range rivaled that of the conservatory trained singer. Throughout her three-octave vocal range, Ella's voice remained uniform in its clarity and child-like timbre.

Ella’s success in the music world has spanned six decades, yielded recordings numbering into the thousands, and earned the singer countless awards including a Kennedy Center Award for her contributions to the performing arts, honorary doctorate degrees from Dartmouth and Yale, and thirteen Grammy Awards. A victim of poverty and abuse, Ella was able to transcend circumstance and develop into one of the greatest singers that America produced.

Ella died on June 15th 1996 of complications associated with diabetes. She was 79 years old. Despite suffering poor health Ella remained an active performer until 1992.

In looking back upon Ella's rich catalogue of recordings, the name of Norman Granz consistently emerges in conjunction with that of Ella's. Ella met the record producer and founder of both the Verve and Pablo jazz labels in 1949, after which the two developed a working relationship that lasted forty years. Under the direction of Norman Granz, Ella recorded her legendary "songbook" albums — a series of albums each devoted to the songs of a particular American composer. Granz also produced Ella's phenomenal collaborations with Count Basie and Duke Ellington, respectively entitled "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "Ella at Duke's Place." All of these recordings are on the Verve label, and are available on CD. After founding the Pablo label, Granz recorded the four Ella Fitzgerald/Joe Pass duet albums, each of which are deservedly considered jazz classics.

Best known for: “Embraceable You�, and “A Tisket, A Tisket

http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/