Ella Fitzgerald is a cult vocalist who has gone down in jazz history forever. Over the course of a long fifty-year career, this African-American singer has recorded more than 2, 000 songs and won 13 Grammy awards.
Complicated childhood and performance at Apollo
Ella Fitzgerald was born in April 1917 in the port city of Newport News in the eastern United States. Shortly after birth, her mother Temperance and father William broke up. Together with her young daughter, Temperance moved to Yonkers, a town in New York State. Here, the mother had a new boyfriend - an immigrant from Portugal, Joseph Da Silva.
In 1932, Temperance died of a sudden cardiac arrest, and Ella, not finding a common language with her stepfather, moved to live with her aunt. Unfortunately, in the new family, no one really looked after the girl. Ella began to skip school, and then found a job as a caretaker and cleaning lady in a brothel. Gradually, young Ella began to sink lower and lower on a social bottom. At one point, she actually became homeless.
In 1934, Ella Fitzgerald, from an early age fascinated by church songs and songs by Connie Boswell, decided to test her strength in an amateur vocal competition at the Apollo Theater. At this contest, she sang the song “Judy” by Hogey Carmichael and won the grand prize of $ 25. This opened up new perspectives for the seventeen-year-old girl.
Creativity and personal life from 1935 to 1955
At the beginning of 1935, Ella Fitzgerald met the talented drummer Chick Webb and got the opportunity to perform with his jazz band in the Savoy - Harlem's famous jazz club.
In 1938, Ella Fitzgerald released her debut single - the song "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", the text of which is based on a children's count. And a year later, another hit of hers was presented to the public - I Found My Yellow Basket.
In 1939, Webb died and the singer actually began to lead the band. And soon he changed his name to "Ella and her Famous Orchestra." Basically, this band specialized in unpretentious, uncomplicated pop songs.
In 1941, Ella Fitzgerald married the port loader Ben Kornegey. This relationship lasted about two years - when Benny was convicted of drug trafficking, Ella Fitzgerald divorced.
But even before the divorce from Kornegey, in 1942, Ella's orchestra broke up. She decided to perform solo and signed a record deal with Decca Records. During the years of cooperation with her, the singer released, for example, hits such as "Oh, Lady Be Good!" and Flying Home.
In 1947, Ella Fitzgerald got married again. This time, the bass player Ray Brown became the husband of the vocalist. They lived together until 1953. However, after the divorce, Ray and Ella continued to communicate.
Ella Fitzgerald on Verve Records
Since 1955, Ella Fitzgerald began recording under the new brand - Verve Records. This brand was founded by producer Norman Granz specifically for the talented singer. Ella's first album, created at the new studio, was called "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book" (1956).
The time when the vocalist was recorded on Verve Records is considered the peak of her career. During this period, Fitzgerald proved herself in several genres (jazz, pop, bebop), achieved perfection in the sket technique (this is a jazz vocal technique in which the voice is used to imitate a musical instrument) and gained truly gigantic popularity.
At the Grammy Award ceremony in 1958, Ella Fitzgerald was awarded two statuettes at once. Strictly speaking, she became the first African American to receive a similar award.
In 1961, the Verve Records label was acquired by a large corporation MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) for three million dollars. And in 1967, the leadership of this corporation decided not to conclude an agreement with Fitzgerald.
