She performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime. Starting in third grade, Fitzgerald loved dancing and admired Earl Snakehips Tucker.

She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929. By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, a poor Italian area. Her half-sister, Frances da Silva, whom she stayed close to for all of her life, was born in 1923.

In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald's mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph da Silva, moved to Yonkers, in Westchester County, New York. Her parents were unmarried but lived together in the East End section of Newport News for at least two and a half years after she was born. She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance 'Tempie' Henry, both described as ' mulatto' in the 1920 census. Her accolades included 14 Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, the NAACP's inaugural President's Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.įitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia. Three years later, she died at age 79 after years of declining health. In 1993, after a career of nearly sixty years, she gave her last public performance. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as ' Dream a Little Dream of Me', ' Cheek to Cheek', ' Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall', and ' It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)'. While Fitzgerald appeared in films and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside her solo career. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career.

Her rendition of the nursery rhyme ' A-Tisket, A-Tasket' helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a 'horn-like' improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.Īfter a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the 'First Lady of Song', 'Queen of Jazz', and 'Lady Ella'.

Ella frank true