Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song.

Ella Fitzgerald was one of the most important jazz singers of the history. She was born in Virginia, U.S.A. She grew up in a modest family. She was still a baby when her parents get separated and she and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, with her new stepfather, Joseph Da Silva. In her youth, she wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters.

Her mother died from a heart attack. Ella fell into depression because she was raped by her stepfather. Following these traumas, she frequently skipped school, and she worked as a lookout at a bordello with a Mafia-affiliated as numbers runner. She was caught for the authorities and she was placed to a state reformatory, the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson.

In 1934, At Apollo Theater in Harlem New York, Ella Fitzgerald won the concourse of Amateur Night Shows. After that, she managed to enter the Chick Webb Orchestra and she recorded almost all the songs of the band and in 1938 she was a famous singer. When Chick Webb died in 1939, the band continued to tour under the new name, "Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra" but in 1942, Fitzgerald left the band to begin a solo career. She developed a unique vocal style that emerged for the decline of the big bands called "scatting". Fitzgerald started scat singing as a major part of her performance.

Over the course of her 59 year of career, Ella won 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

In 1993, Fitzgerald had both her legs amputated because the effects of diabetes. In 1996 she died when she was 79 of the disease in Beverly Hills, California.