She was born in Newport News -Virginia- and grew up in Yonkers -New York-, in a situation of permanent poverty. Her father, William Fitzgerald, a train conductor, abandoned her mother Temperance (Tempie) Fitzgerald, a laundress, when she was still very young.

Nicknamed Lady Ella, the Queen of Jazz and the First Lady of Song, she was an American jazz singer. Despite her basic condition as a jazz player, Ella Fitzgerald’s musical repertoire is much broader and includes swing, blues, bossa nova, samba, gospel, calypso, Christmas songs, pop. etc.

Because of her elegance and her vocal technique, she endowed her with great versatility in her repertoire. She was, together with the great trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the main figure of scat singing.

Her artistic ability went much further, as she was capable of offering great performances in many other styles.

She was very calm, she knew how to handle the fame she had and that not only allowed her to continue evolving, but also led her to be recognized with 14 Grammy Awards and awarded the National Medal of Arts and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She made her singing debut at age 17, on November 21, 1934 at the Harlem Apollo Theater in New York, winning the Amateur Night Shows contest with the song “Judy”, sung in the style of her idol Connee Boswell.

He began his solo career in 1941. He sang with the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and The Delta Rhythm, and in 1946 he began singing regularly at Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic (JAP) concerts, Granz becoming his manager.

Her recordings of “Lady Be Good”, “How High the Moon” and “Flying Home” during 1945-1947 became very popular and her stature as one of the leading voices of jazz was cemented.

After appearing in the 1955 film Pete Kelly’s Blues, Ella was finally signed to Norman Granz’s Verve label and for several years she would record the famous Song Books of great composers American popular music.

Her signing to the Verve label in 1956 brought her closer to jazz, and she began a fruitful stage during which, until the mid-1960s, she recorded more than 250 songs with the best composers of the day, such as the aforementioned Porter or Ellington or figures of the magnitude of Richard Rogers, George Gershwin or Jerome Kern, among others.

Recordings of her with her orchestras are considered among the best in jazz history. One of those made for this label was Ella & Basie, where she collaborated with Count Basie and a young Quincy Jones as a guest artist.

A serious illness kept her away from the music scene since the mid-1960s, but she resumed her activity in the 1970s, recording and performing regularly again.

In her later years, Fitzgerald returned to Granz to join his new company, Pablo. Her collaboration began with a major concert in 1972, the Santa Monica Civic Concert, and continued throughout the decade with fully jazz-oriented records.

In 1996, tired of being in the hospital, she wanted to spend her last days at home. Confined to a wheelchair, she spent her last days in the backyard of her Beverly Hills mansion in Whittier, with her son Ray and her 12-year-old granddaughter Alice.

Along with Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, she is considered the most important and influential singer in all of jazz history.

She was gifted with a voice with a vocal range of three octaves, highlighting her clear and precise vocalization and her ability to improvise.

Major awards and honors she received during her career included the Kennedy Center for the Arts Medal of Honor Award, the National Medal of Art, and the first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named “Ella” in her honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the UCLA Spring Sing.

She received the USC “Magnum Opus” Award which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. In 1990, she received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Harvard University.

She went through various musical styles. She started out in swing, she moved to bebop, she sang scat though she ended up being a jazz vocalist extraordinaire. We also listen to her for blues, bossa nova, even for calypsos and Christmas carols

Ella Fitzgerald sang everything and she sang it all well, although in our memories we will always have songs like “Dream a Little Dream of Me” with Louis Armstrong, as well as the legendary songs “Cheek to Cheek” and “Summertime”, also with the great trumpeter. It should also be noted that Frank Sinatra was a big fan of his and they worked together on songs like “The Lady Is A Tramp”.