Happy Birthday to jazz superstar Ella Fitzgerald (b. April 25, 1917, in Newport News, VA), whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. She filled any venue and her sound proved timeless. Her career lined up beautifully with the history of recorded sound and broadcasting, as radio took off during her childhood. As scholar Stuart writes, “Her vocal style, widely acknowledged as a touchstone of excellence, has been admired for its purity of tone, clarity of diction, harmonic imagination, and a highly refined sense of swing.” She was a very secretive person throughout her life, which continues to give her story a shroud of mystery. This insular character also makes her music highly relatable for many people, as it is difficult to attach to the story of her life. What is clear is that she was deeply passionate about her craft. Nicholson emphasizes that “Music meant everything to Ella. Friends and musicians close to her spoke of how she constantly turned songs over in her mind or hummed them to herself, imagining how they might turn out during a performance.”
Citations: Stuart Nicholson, Ella Fitzgerald: The Complete Biography (New York: Routledge, 2004), xviii, 1, 7, Kindle edition; William Paul Gottlieb, “Ella Fitzgerald (with Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, and Milt Jackson),” photograph (location unknown, 1947), public domain, https://www.si.edu/object/ella-fitzgerald-ray-brown-dizzy-gillespie-and-milt-jackson:npg_NPG.2016.60.
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