Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’ helped boost both her and Chick Webb to national fame. Her accolades included 14 Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died of complications from a stroke in 2011.

About Ella Fitzgerald in brief

Summary Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer. She was sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. Her accolades included 14 Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’ helped boost both her and Chick Webb to national fame. Her collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance, and died three years later, aged 79. She is survived by her daughter, daughter-in-law, son, and step-daughter. She also had a half-sister, Frances Da Silva, who was born in 1923, and a step-great-granddaughter, Frances Fitzgerald, born in 1925, who died in 2008. She had a son, William Fitzgerald, who is also a jazz singer, and daughter, Frances “Ella” Fitzgerald, a pianist, and pianist. Fitzgerald died of complications from a stroke in 2011. She will be buried at Mount Sinai Cemetery in New York City, where she was a member of the St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church for more than 30 years. Her funeral will be held on November 14, 2011. Her son, Bill Fitzgerald, will be remembered as the father of Ella Jane Fitzgerald, the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Henry.

Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia, and grew up in Westchester County, New York. Her mother died in a car accident when she was 15, and her stepfather took care of her until she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt in 1933. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. She made her debut at age 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater. In January 1935, she won the chance to perform at the theater for a week, but never gave her part of her appearance, because of her disheveled appearance. While she sang in the style of Connee Boswell, she sang  Judy Object of My Affection and My Object of my Affection. Fitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby. She loved the Boswell Sisters’ lead singer Connee boswell, later saying, “I tried so hard to sound just like her… I tried sohard to soundjust like her’” She was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929. In 1932, when Fitzgerald was fifteen, her mother died from injuries sustained in acar accident. She moved to Yonkers, in. Westchester counties, and lived with her mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph Da Silva.