Ella Fitzgerald(1917-1996)
- Music Artist
- Actress
- Music Department
On Saturday, June 15th, 1996, an era in jazz singing came to an end,
with the death of Ella Fitzgerald at her home in California. She was the last
of four great female jazz singers (including Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and
Carmen McRae) who defined one of the most prolific eras in jazz vocal style.
Ella had extraordinary vocal skills from the time she was a teenager,
and joined the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1935 when she was 16 years old.
With an output of more than 200 albums, she was at her sophisticated
best with the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, of George Gershwin, and of Cole Porter.
Her 13 Grammy awards are more than any other jazz performer, and she
won the Best Female Vocalist award three years in a row. Completely at
home with up-tempo songs, her scat singing placed her jazz vocals with
the finest jazz instrumentalists, and it was this magnificent voice
that she brought to her film appearances. Her last few years, during
which she had a bout with congestive heart failure and suffered
bilateral amputation of her legs from complications of diabetes, were
spent in seclusion.
