Ella Fitzgerald – Happy Birthday!
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Excerpts from the Official Website of Ella Fitzgerald…
http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/about/biography.html
Today is the birthday of “The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald. She was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.
Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.)
She performed at top venues all over the world, and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common – they all loved her.
Fast Facts
Birth Name: Ella Fitzgerald
Nickname: “Lady Ella” and “First Lady of Song”
Birth date: April 25, 1917
Birth place: Newport News, Va.
Death date: June 15, 1996
Death place: Beverly Hills, Calif.
Parents: William Fitzgerald, Temperance Siblings: Frances Da Silva (half sister)
Married: Benny Kornegay (1939-1940), Ray Brown (1946-1952)
Children: Ray Brown, Jr.
Grandchildren: Alice Brown
First stage performance: Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater, 1934
First recording: “Love and Kisses,” Decca – 1936
First number one song: “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” – 1938
Favorite sports teams: (Los Angeles) Dodgers, Lakers
Did You Know?
As a child, Ella enjoyed playing baseball.
Ella’s favorite singers as a child were Louis Armstrong and Connee Boswell.
Ella made her first recording on June 12, 1935 with Chick Webb. It was called “Love and Kisses.
In the 1940s, Ella was known as one of the best scat singers in the world.
Throughout her career, Ella recorded at least 200 albums.
Happy Birthday Ella…May you rest in peace.