The rich heritage of African-American music has been written about in this blog several times; we’ve looked variously at The Ink Spots, Sam & Dave, Billie Holliday, Miles Davis, Paul Robeson, Nina Simone and Louis Jordan. Of course, there are many notables missing from that list but there is only so much time and space, and we’re a blog not an encyclopaedia. Nonetheless, there is one notable name for whom omission would constitute a crime and that is the Queen of Jazz herself, Ella Fitzgerald.
Born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917, Ella Jane Fitzgerald’s early life was a tumultuous one: her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident in 1932, leaving the fifteen-year old Ella in the care of her step-father, who was rumoured to have abused her. Ella began skipping school and running around with the wrong sorts of people, and when the authorities caught up with her she was sent to the Colored Orphan Asylum in the Bronx. But throughout this time, of course, Ella sang, and on a November night in 1934, she got herself onto the bill of one of the Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She took first prize and her life changed.
Ella was soon to meet bandleader Chick Webb who tried her out with his band at a dance at Yale University. Met with approval by audience and musicians alike, Webb signed her up and she became a popular fixture at the band’s regular performances at legendary Harlem venue, the Savoy Ballroom. When Webb died, Ella took over as bandleader and they became Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra. Thus began a long career spanning sixty years, in which she made music as a solo artist but also collaboratively with such greats as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie (not to mention the already-mentioned Inkspots and Louis Jordan).
In 1993, she gave her last public performance, and three years later she died at age 79 after years of declining health. Whilst I might have picked a well-known song from so many she recorded 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), today let’s listen to her exquisite rendering of Cole Porter’s masterpiece, Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.
While I love Ray Charles’s and Betty Carter’s version, I would listen to Ella sing the J. G. Wentworth commercial jingle and I’d probably put it on repeat. She has a dimensionality to her voice that is so rare. Love her. Thanks for this.
I also love Ray Charles and Betty Carter’s versions. Being on this side of the pond, though, I had to look up the J G Wentworth commercial as I wasn’t familiar with it — I see that it is iconic in the US (and in Canada, I guess!). It made me wonder what I would use in the same context: “her voice is so good I could listen to her singing…” and I came up with our supermarket Morrisons’s long-running “More reasons to shop at Morrisons”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq7VeiLiSXk
🙂