Ella at 100! The First Lady of Song’s rich musical legacy is still alive and well in Europe, Canada and across the USA, including Michigan. Today kicks off the official centennial celebration of legendary American songstress Ella Jane Fitzgerald who was born on April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia.
For the next 365 days, the calendar will be packed with talented artists and historians paying homage to the world’s most popular female jazz singer for more than half a century. During her career, she won 13 Grammy awards, sold more than 40 million albums and recorded over 2,000 songs.
In Howard Reich’s book, Let Freedom Swing, here’s how Ella was described: “...No singer before or since had ever reeled off such brilliant, fast-flying passages, no jazz vocalist had ever matched Dizzy Gillespie’s mercurial trumpet passages with such apparent ease and fluidity.” In a recent interview, Tad Hershorn, the Project Archivist at Rutgers University’s prestigious Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark said, “Ella’s command of popular music and jazz and her ability to go back and forth is unparalleled. She mastered every genre of American music…and she took it from scratch every time she went on stage!” On Ella’s official website she is remembered this way: “(Ella) worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.) …Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common - they all loved her.”
No wonder the shy and reserved young lady who began her singing career by mesmerizing a crowd at the famous New York Apollo Theater on Amateur Night in 1934 never lost an audience. Ella performed on practically every continent but she also had numerous connections – past and present - to our Great Lakes State.
During the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, Ella, holding her signature handkerchief, delighted crowds in Detroit’s Paradise Valley, affectionately known as Black Bottom, at the 606 Horseshoe Lounge and Club Three Sixes as well as more majestic venues such as the old Graystone Ballroom, Fox Theatre, Music Hall and the Paradise Theater (now called Orchestra Hall) where Ella frequented more than 25 times. Sometimes she appeared with the famous bands of Chick Webb and Dizzy “Be-Bop” Gillespie and sometimes on stage by herself with just her talented trio. Throughout the years, she also performed in more intimate settings such as Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, the world’s oldest jazz club which began booking acts there in 1934. An Ohio Magazine article recounts the time Ella “stopped in to hear her good pal, Detroit native and jazz pianist Tommy Flanagan (play) here. The songstress ended up staying and singing her greatest hits into the wee small hours.”
Everyone knows that Detroit is home to some of the greatest musical performances in history. Ella greatly contributed to that world famous reputation! But she also shared her concerts with other Michigan cities. Archives of The Michigan Daily newspaper have stories about Ella Fitzgerald concerts at the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium in the 1940’s, 50’s and 70’s. She also made it to the west side of the state.
In 2005, I had the pleasure of teaming up with the Ford Motor Company and Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History to host a 30-minute television documentary about the life of Ella, who was posthumously that year’s Ford Freedom Award honoree. Ella died on June 15, 1996 in Beverly Hills, California due to the effects of diabetes.
She was paired up that year with the late Grammy Award-winning singer Al Jarreau, the Ford Freedom Award Scholar, who said he benefited from Ella’s trailblazing career. Ms. Fitzgerald’s brass name plate now rests proudly in the Ford Rotunda’s floor of the Wright Museum’s historic “Ring of Genealogy.”
Extremely helpful to me with Ella research over the years has been Fran Morris-Rosman, who runs the Los Angeles-based Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation along with her husband, Richard, and son, Randall, the dedicated keepers of Ella’s legacy. The Rosmans deserve a lot of credit for keeping Ella relevant. Hershorn says, “This centennial commemoration is a chance for all of us to relive the body of Ella’s work which is representative of the very best of this country.”
And it goes far beyond Ella’s music. Norman Granz was her longtime personal manager. According to Hershorn, author of Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice, Ella “was his star.” Hershorn recalls, “Granz was a segregation fighter and jazz moneymaker. When you worked for Granz you went first-class. He only booked Ella at the world’s top venues and he didn’t put up with segregation. If audiences weren’t integrated, he would cancel shows.” Together, Ella Fitzgerald and Norman Granz opened up once closed doors and knocked down music industry racial barriers.
Buildings have been named after Ella and in Detroit there’s a park and neighborhood in her honor. Earlier this year, Mayor Mike Duggan announced a $30 million strategic fund to renovate vacant homes and revitalize that area of the city west of Livernois Avenue near the University of Detroit Mercy and Marygrove College. The Fitzgerald neighborhood project should be done by 2019.
From now until April 25, 2018, concert halls and festivals around the world will celebrate Ella. But closer to home, singer Dee Daniels and the West Michigan Symphony will showcase a jazz program featuring swing legends Ella, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughan at Muskegon’s Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts on April 28. On May 5, the Arts Academy Jazz Ensemble showcasing singer Carmen Bradford will perform songs made famous by Ella at Interlochen’s Dendrinos Chapel and Recital Hall. And on Labor Day, September 4, world-renown Detroit violinist Regina Carter will be playing a tribute called “Simply Ella” at the Detroit Jazz Festival to mark the 100th anniversary of the late singer’s birth.
Carter said, “To this very day, whenever I hear an Ella recording, it grabs me at my core. …Ella is sublime, and she is at the top of my go-to list when learning a jazz tune. …I’m so excited to celebrate Ella Fitzgerald, an artist who meant so much to all the notes in my musical life.”
Hershorn photographed Ella over many years and remembers something about her that would probably surprise most people who saw her in person or watch her past performances. “Before she went on stage, stay out of her way! She was nervous before every performance. She strived for perfection and she did it almost 60 years. She will never be duplicated. Ella is the gold standard!”
Indeed she is. Let’s celebrate Ella at 100!
Here are some of Tad Hershorn’s favorite photographs and links to his “top pick” performances of the late jazz singer Ella Jane Fitzgerald. Enjoy!
