Ella Fitzgerald

Sam Waymon, the brother of Nina Simone, once stated, “Music can save you by giving [you] a sense of vision, tolerance, [and] harmony; it can give you . . . a fullness.” Waymon’s words reflect heavily in the life of Ella Fitzgerald. With her life beginning in poverty, music saved Ella. Writers and musicians alike commemorate Ella Fitzgerald in 2019 with books and albums dedicated in her honor. In her recent album devoted wholly to the swinging sounds of the Queen of Jazz, renowned jazz violinist Regina Carter pays musical homage and describes Ella Fitzgerald’s voice as a “voice that was able to bring people together.” Carter continues, “Hearing [Fitzgerald’s] voice was love.” With the pluck of the string, harmonic arpeggios, and instrumental technique that mimic the voice of Ella Fitzgerald, Regina Carter released her timely album Ella: Accentuate the Positive (cited under Accentuating Sound). The year 2017 marks the 100th birthday of famed jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, also noted as Mama Jazz, the Memorex Lady, and the First Lady of Song. While remembering the vocal ingenuity of Fitzgerald, variance, timbre, tone, texture, cadence, improvisation, and symphonic melody are all words that crown the First Lady of Song. Born in 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, Fitzgerald began singing in church when she and her mother moved from Virginia to New York. As an adolescent in 1934, she entered the Apollo Theater’s weekly amateur night competition. Inundated with trepidation at the audience’s reaction to known dancers, the Edwards Sisters, who competed before her, Fitzgerald decided to sing instead of dance. Much to her surprise after singing, Fitzgerald won the competition that night. In 1936, Fitzgerald produced her first recording with Decca Records. Known for her scat singing style and tuning her voice to sound like an instrument, Fitzgerald famously collaborated with jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, and other musicians. During the civil rights movement and years after, Ella’s appearances on The Nat King Cole Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Frank Sinatra Show, and other televised productions conveyed her ability to traverse racial barriers and disseminate her gift of song to all audiences, nationally and internationally. Fitzgerald has won thirteen Grammy Awards and sold forty million albums. This article first examines the theoretical frameworks of history and memory through which scholars examine African American expressive culture. It is through the accentuation of sound in text and in the intersections of music and literature that the gems of black culture and consciousness are found. The citations cover a breadth of material from jazz and literary theory, focusing on what Fitzgerald brings to the community, nation, and the world.