A watch is a small timepiece, typically worn either on the wrist or attached on a chain and carried in a pocket, with wristwatches being the most common type of watch used today. They evolved in the 17th century from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 15th century. The first watches were strictly mechanical. As technology progressed, the mechanisms used to measure time have, in some cases, been replaced by use of quartz vibrations or electromagnetic pulses and are called quartz movements. The first digital electronic watch was developed in 1970.

Before wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches, which often had covers and were carried in a pocket and attached to a watch chain or watch fob. In early 1900s, the wristwatch, originally called a Wristlet, was reserved for women and considered more of a passing fad than a serious timepiece. Real gentlemen, who carried pocket watches, were actually quoted as saying they would "sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch" . This all changed in World War I when soldiers on the battlefield found using a pocket watch to be impractical, so they attached the pocket watch to their wrist by a cupped leather strap. It is also believed that Girard-Perregaux equipped the German Imperial Navy in a similar fashion as early as the 1880s, which were used while synchronizing naval attacks and firing artillery.

Most inexpensive and medium-priced watches used mainly for timekeeping are electronic watches with quartz movements. Expensive, collectible watches valued more for their workmanship and aesthetic appeal than for simple timekeeping, often have purely mechanical movements and are powered by springs, even though mechanical movements are less accurate than more affordable quartz movements. In addition to the time, modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions. Watches that provide additional time-related features such as timers, chronographs and alarm functions are not uncommon. Some modern designs even go as far as using GPS technology or heart-rate monitoring capabilities.

History

Movement

A movement in watchmaking is the mechanism that measures the passage of time and displays the current time (and possibly other information including date, month and day). Movements may be entirely mechanical, entirely electronic (potentially with no moving parts), or a blend of the two. Most watches intended mainly for timekeeping today have electronic movements, with mechanical hands on the watch face indicating the time.

Mechanical movements

Compared to electronic movements, mechanical watches are less accurate, often with errors of seconds per day, and they are sensitive to position, temperature and magnetism. They are also costly to produce, require regular maintenance and adjustment, and are more prone to failure. Nevertheless, the craftsmanship of mechanical watches still attracts interest from part of the watch-buying public. Skeleton watches are designed to leave the mechanism visible for aesthetic purposes.

Mechanical movements use an escapement mechanism to control and limit the unwinding and winding parts of a spring, converting what would otherwise be a simple unwinding into a controlled and periodic energy release. Mechanical movements also use a balance wheel together with the balance spring (also known as a hairspring) to control motion of the gear system of the watch in a manner analogous to the pendulum of a pendulum clock. The tourbillon, an optional part for mechanical movements, is a rotating frame for the escapement, which is used to cancel out or reduce the effects of gravitational bias to the timekeeping. Due to the complexity of designing a tourbillon, they are very expensive, and only found in "prestige" watches.

The pin-lever escapement (called the Roskopf movement after its inventor, Georges Frederic Roskopf), which is a cheaper version of the fully levered movement, was manufactured in huge quantities by many Swiss manufacturers as well as Timex, until it was replaced by quartz movements.

Tuning-fork watches use a type of electromechanical movement. Introduced by Bulova in 1960, they use a tuning fork with a precise frequency (most often 360 hertz) to drive a mechanical watch. The task of converting electronically pulsed fork vibration into rotary movement is done via two tiny jeweled fingers, called pawls. Tuning-fork watches were rendered obsolete when electronic quartz watches were developed, because quartz watches were cheaper to produce and even more accurate.

Traditional mechanical watch movements use a spiral spring called a mainspring as a power source. In ''manual watches'' the spring must be rewound periodically by the user by turning the watch crown. Antique pocketwatches were wound by inserting a separate key into a hole in the back of the watch and turning it. Most modern watches are designed to run 40 hours on a winding and thus must be wound daily, but some run for several days and a few have 192-hour mainsprings and are wound weekly.

A ''self-winding'' or ''automatic'' watches is one that rewinds the mainspring of a mechanical movement by the natural motions of the wearer's body. The first self-winding mechanism was invented for pocketwatches in 1770 by Abraham-Louis Perrelet, but the first "self-winding", or "automatic", wristwatch was the invention of a British watch repairer named John Harwood in 1923. This type of watch allows for constant winding without special action from the wearer; it works by an eccentric weight, called a winding rotor, which rotates with the movement of the wearer's wrist. The back-and-forth motion of the winding rotor couples to a ratchet to automatically wind the mainspring. Self-winding watches usually can also be wound manually so they can be kept running when not worn or if the wearer's wrist motions are inadequate to keep the watch wound.

Electronic movements

Electronic movements have few or no moving parts, as they use the piezoelectric effect in a tiny quartz crystal to provide a stable time base for a mostly electronic movement. The crystal forms a quartz oscillator which resonates at a specific and highly stable frequency, and which can be used to accurately pace a timekeeping mechanism. For this reason, electronic watches are often called ''quartz watches.'' Most quartz movements are primarily electronic but are geared to drive mechanical hands on the face of the watch in order to provide a traditional analog display of the time, which is still preferred by some consumers.

In 1959 Seiko gave an order to Epson (a daughter company of Seiko and the actual brain behind the quartz revolution) to start developing a quartz wristwatch. The project was codenamed 59A and by the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, Seiko had a working prototype of a portable quartz watch which took part in time measurements throughout the event. The first Swiss prototypes of electronic quartz watches were made by the CEH research laboratory in Switzerland in 1962. The first quartz watch to enter production was the Seiko 35 SQ Astron, which hit the shelves on December 25, 1969. One particularly interesting decision made by Seiko at that time was to not patent the whole movement of the quartz wristwatch, thus allowing other manufacturers to benefit from the Seiko technology. This played a major role in the popularity and quick development of the quartz watch, which in less than a decade was dominant in the watch market, nearly ending an almost 100 years of mechanical wristwatch heritage. The modern quartz movements are produced in very large quantities, and even the cheapest wristwatches typically have quartz movements. Whereas mechanical movements can typically be off by several seconds a day, an inexpensive quartz movement in a child's wristwatch may still be accurate to within half a second per day—ten times better than a mechanical movement. Seiko's efforts to combine the quartz and mechanical movements bore fruit after 20 years of research, leading to the introduction of the Seiko Spring Drive, first in a limited domestic market production in 1999 and to the world in September 2005. The Spring Drive manages to keep time within quartz standards without the use of a battery, using a traditional mechanical gear train powered by a spring, while at the same time doesn't have the need of a balance wheel either.

Radio time signal watches are a type of electronic quartz watch which synchronizes (time transfer) its time with an external time source such as in atomic clocks, time signals from GPS navigation satellites, the German DCF77 signal in Europe, WWVB in the US, and others. Movements of this type may -among others- synchronize not only the time of day but also the date, the leap-year status of the current year, and the current state of daylight saving time (on or off). However, other than the radio receiver these watches are normal quartz watches in all other aspects.

Electronic watches require electricity as a power source. Some mechanical movements and hybrid electronic-mechanical movements also require electricity. Usually the electricity is provided by a replaceable battery. The first use of electrical power in watches was as a substitute for the mainspring, in order to remove the need for winding. The first electrically-powered watch, the Hamilton Electric 500, was released in 1957 by the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Watch batteries (strictly speaking cells, as a battery is composed of multiple cells) are specially designed for their purpose. They are very small and provide tiny amounts of power continuously for very long periods (several years or more). In most cases, replacing the battery requires a trip to a watch-repair shop or watch dealer; this is especially true for watches that are designed to be water-resistant, as special tools and procedures are required to ensure that the watch remains water-resistant after battery replacement. Silver-oxide and lithium batteries are popular today; mercury batteries, formerly quite common, are no longer used, for environmental reasons. Cheap batteries may be alkaline, of the same size as silver-oxide cells but providing shorter life. Rechargeable batteries are used in some solar powered watches.

Some electronic watches are also powered by the movement of the wearer of the watch. For instance, Seiko's Kinetic powered quartz watches make use of the motion of the wearer's arm turning a rotating weight which causes a tiny generator to supply power to charge a rechargeable battery that runs the watch. The concept is similar to that of self-winding spring movements, except that electrical power is generated instead of mechanical spring tension.

Solar powered watches are powered by light. A photovoltaic cell on the face (dial) of the watch converts light to electricity, which in turn is used to charge a rechargeable battery or capacitor. The movement of the watch draws its power from the rechargeable battery or capacitor. As long as the watch is regularly exposed to fairly strong light (such as sunlight), it never needs battery replacement, and some models need only a few minutes of sunlight to provide weeks of energy (as in the Citizen Eco-Drive). Some of the early solar watches of the 1970s had innovative and unique designs to accommodate the array of solar cells needed to power them (Synchronar, Nepro, Sicura and some models by Cristalonic, Alba, Seiko and Citizen). As the decades progressed and the efficiency of the solar cells increased while the power requirements of the movement and display decreased, solar watches began to be designed to look like other conventional watches.

A rarely used power source is the temperature difference between the wearer's arm and the surrounding environment (as applied in the Citizen Eco-Drive Thermo).

Display

Analogue

Traditionally, watches have displayed the time in analogue form, with a numbered dial upon which are mounted at least a rotating hour hand and a longer, rotating minute hand. Many watches also incorporate a third hand that shows the current second of the current minute. Watches powered by quartz usually have a second hand that snaps every second to the next marker. Watches powered by a mechanical movement have a "sweep second hand", the name deriving from its uninterrupted smooth (sweeping) movement across the markers, although this is actually a misnomer in most cases; the hand merely moves in smaller steps, typically 1/5 of a second, corresponding to the beat (half period) of the balance wheel. In some escapements (for example the ''duplex'' escapement), the hand advances every two beats (full period) of the balance wheel, typically 1/2 second in those watches, or even every four beats (two periods, 1 second), in the ''double duplex'' escapement. A truly sweeping second hand is achieved with the ''tri-synchro regulator'' of Spring Drive watches. All of the hands are normally mechanical, physically rotating on the dial, although a few watches have been produced with "hands" that are simulated by a liquid-crystal display.

Analog display of the time is nearly universal in watches sold as jewelry or collectibles, and in these watches, the range of different styles of hands, numbers, and other aspects of the analogue dial is very broad. In watches sold for timekeeping, analog display remains very popular, as many people find it easier to read than digital display; but in timekeeping watches the emphasis is on clarity and accurate reading of the time under all conditions (clearly marked digits, easily visible hands, large watch faces, etc.). They are specifically designed for the left wrist with the stem (the knob used for changing the time) on the right side of the watch; this makes it easy to change the time without removing the watch from the wrist. This is the case if one is right-handed and the watch is worn on the left wrist (as is traditionally done). If one is left-handed and wears the watch on the right wrist, one has to remove the watch from the wrist to reset the time or to wind the watch.

Analog watches as well as clocks are often marketed showing a display time of approximately 10:09 or 10:10. This creates a visually pleasing smile-like face on upper half of the watch, in addition to enclosing the manufacturer's name. Digital displays often show a time of 12:08, where the increases in the numbers from left to right culminating in the fully-lit numerical display of the 8 also gives a positive feeling.

Analogue watch displays can be used to indicate cardinal direction due to the relation between the position of the hour hand and the position of the Sun in the sky. By rotating the watch so that the hour hand points toward the Sun, the point halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock will indicate south when observing from a position in the Northern hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, the point halfway between the hour hand pointed at the sun and 12 o'clock on the dial indicates North.

Digital

A digital display simply shows the time as a number, ''e.g.'', ''12:08'' instead of a short hand pointing towards the number 12 and a long hand 8/60 of the way round the dial.

The first digital ''mechanical'' pocket watches appeared in late 19th century. In the 1920s the first digital mechanical wristwatches appeared.

The first digital ''electronic'' watch, a Pulsar LED prototype in 1970, was developed jointly by Hamilton Watch Company and Electro-Data. John Bergey, the head of Hamilton's Pulsar division, said that he was inspired to make a digital timepiece by the then-futuristic digital clock that Hamilton themselves made for the 1968 science fiction film ''2001: A Space Odyssey''. On April 4, 1972, the Pulsar was finally ready, made in 18-carat gold and sold for $2,100. It had a red light-emitting diode (LED) display.

Digital LED watches were very expensive and out of reach to the common consumer until 1975, when Texas Instruments started to mass produce LED watches inside a plastic case. These watches, which first retailed for only $20, reduced to $10 in 1976, saw Pulsar lose $6 million and the Pulsar brand sold to Seiko.

Most watches with LED displays required that the user press a button to see the time displayed for a few seconds, because LEDs used so much power that they could not be kept operating continuously. Usually the LED display color would be red. Watches with LED displays were popular for a few years, but soon the LED displays were superseded by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which used less battery power and were much more convenient in use, with the display always visible and no need to push a button before seeing the time. The first LCD watch with a six-digit LCD was the 1973 Seiko 06LC, although various forms of early LCD watches with a four-digit display were marketed as early as 1972 including the 1972 Gruen Teletime LCD Watch, and the Cox Electronic Systems Quarza.

From the 1980s onward, digital watch technology vastly improved. In 1982 Seiko produced a watch with a small television screen built in, and Casio produced a digital watch with a thermometer as well as another that could translate 1,500 Japanese words into English. In 1985, Casio produced the CFX-400 scientific calculator watch. In 1987 Casio produced a watch that could dial your telephone number and Citizen revealed one that would react to your voice. In 1995 Timex released a watch which allowed the wearer to download and store data from a computer to his wrist. Some watches, such as the Timex Datalink USB, feature dot matrix displays. Since their apex during the late 1980s to mid 1990s high technology fad, digital watches have mostly become simpler, less expensive time pieces with little variety between models.

Despite these many advances, almost all watches with digital displays are used as timekeeping watches. Expensive watches for collectors rarely have digital displays since there is little demand for them. Less craftsmanship is required to make a digital watch face and most collectors find that analog dials (especially with complications) vary in quality more than digital dials due to the details and finishing of the parts that make up the dial (thus making the differences between a cheap and expensive watch more evident).

Functions

All watches provide the time of day, giving at least the hour and minute, and usually the second. Most also provide the current date, and often the day of the week as well. However, many watches also provide a great deal of information beyond the basics of time and date. Some watches include alarms. Other elaborate and more expensive watches, both pocket and wrist models, also incorporate striking mechanisms or repeater functions, so that the wearer could learn the time by the sound emanating from the watch. This announcement or striking feature is an essential characteristic of true clocks and distinguishes such watches from ordinary timepieces. This feature is available on most digital watches.

A ''complicated watch'' has one or more functions beyond the basic function of displaying the time and the date; such a functionality is called a complication. Two popular complications are the chronograph complication, which is the ability of the watch movement to function as a stopwatch, and the moonphase complication, which is a display of the lunar phase. Other more expensive complications include Tourbillon, Perpetual calendar, Minute repeater, and Equation of time. A truly complicated watch has many of these complications at once (see Calibre 89 from Patek Philippe for instance). Some watches can both indicate the direction of Mecca and have alarms that can be set for all daily prayer requirements. Among watch enthusiasts, complicated watches are especially collectible. Some watches include a second 12-hour display for UTC (as Pontos Grand Guichet GMT).

The similar-sounding terms chronograph and chronometer are often confused, although they mean altogether different things. A chronograph has a stopwatch complication, as explained above, while a chronometer watch has a high quality mechanical or a thermo-compensated quartz movement that has been tested and certified to operate within a certain standard of accuracy by the COSC (Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres). The concepts are different but not mutually exclusive; so a watch can be a chronograph, a chronometer, both, or neither.

Many computerized wristwatches have been developed, but none have had long-term sales success, because they have awkward user interfaces due to the tiny screens and buttons, and a short battery life. As miniaturized electronics became cheaper, watches have been developed containing calculators, tonometers, barometers, altimeters, video games, digital cameras, keydrives, GPS receivers and cellular phones. In the early 1980s Seiko marketed a watch with a television in it. Such watches have also had the reputation as unsightly and thus mainly geek toys. Several companies have however attempted to develop a computer contained in a wristwatch (see also wearable computer).

Braille watches have analogue displays with raised bumps around the face to allow blind users to tell the time. Their digital equivalents use synthesised speech to speak the time on command.

Uses

Fashion

Wristwatches are often appreciated as jewelry or as collectible works of art rather than just as timepieces. This has created several different markets for wristwatches, ranging from very inexpensive but accurate watches (intended for no other purpose than telling the correct time) to extremely expensive watches that serve mainly as personal adornment (featuring jewel bearings to hold gemstones) or as examples of high achievement in miniaturization and precision mechanical engineering.

Traditionally, men's dress watches appropriate for informal (business), semi-formal, and formal attire are gold, thin, simple, and plain, but recent conflation of dressiness and high price has led to a belief among some that expensive rugged, complicated, or sports watches are also dressy because of their high cost. Some dress watches have a cabochon on the crown and many women's dress watches have faceted gemstones on the face, bezel, or bracelet. Some are made entirely of facetted sapphire (corundum).

Many fashion and department stores offer a variety of less-expensive, trendy, "costume" watches (usually for women), many of which are similar in quality to basic quartz timepieces but which feature bolder designs. In the 1980s, the Swiss Swatch company hired graphic designers to redesign a new annual collection of non-repairable watches.

Most companies that produce watches specialize in one or some of these markets. Companies such as Patek Philippe, Blancpain and Jaeger-LeCoultre specialize in simple and complicated mechanical dress watches; companies such as Omega SA, Ball Watch Company, TAG Heuer, Sinn, Breitling, Panerai and Rolex specialize in rugged, reliable mechanical watches for sport and aviation use. Companies such as Casio, Timex, and Seiko specialize in watches as affordable timepieces or multifunctional computers.

Counterfeit watches which mimic expensive fashions watches are estimated to cost the watchmaker industry per year.

Space

Zero gravity environment and other extreme conditions encountered by astronauts in space requires the use of specially tested watches. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin wore a Shturmanskie (a transliteration of Штурманские which actually means "navigator's") wristwatch during his historic first flight into space. The Shturmanskie was manufactured at the First Moscow Factory. Since 1964, the watches of the First Moscow Factory have been marked by the trademark "ПОЛЕТ", transliterated as "POLJOT", which means "flight" in Russian and is a tribute to the many space trips its watches have accomplished. In the late 1970s, Poljot launched a new chrono movement, the 3133. With a 23 jewel movement and manual winding (43 hours), it was a modified Russian version of the Swiss Valjoux 7734 of the early 1970s. Poljot 3133 were taken into space by astronauts from Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine. On the arm of Valeriy Polyakov, a Poljot 3133 chronograph movement-based watch set a space record for the longest space flight in history.

During the 1960s, a large range of watches were tested for durability and precision under extreme temperature changes and vibrations. The Omega Speedmaster Professional was selected by NASA, the U.S. space agency. Heuer became the first Swiss watch in space thanks to a Heuer Stopwatch, worn by John Glenn in 1962 when he piloted the Friendship 7 on the first manned U.S. orbital mission. The Breitling Navitimer Cosmonaute was designed with a 24-hour analog dial to avoid confusion between AM and PM, which are meaningless in space. It was first worn in space by U.S. astronaut Scott Carpenter on May 24, 1962 in the Aurora 7 mercury capsule. Since 1994 Fortis is the exclusive supplier for manned space missions authorized by the Russian Federal Space Agency. China National Space Administration (CNSA) astronauts wear the Fiyta spacewatches. At BaselWorld, 2008, Seiko announced the creation of the first watch ever designed specifically for a space walk, Spring Drive Spacewalk. Timex Datalink is flight certified by NASA for space missions and is one of the watches qualified by NASA for space travel.Both the Casio G-Shock DW-5600C and 5600E are Flight-Qualified for NASA space travel. The various Datalink models were used both by cosmonauts and astronauts.

Scuba diving

Watches may be crafted to become water resistant. These watches are sometimes called diving watches when they are suitable for scuba diving or saturation diving. The International Organization for Standardization issued a standard for water resistant watches which also prohibits the term "waterproof" to be used with watches, which many countries have adopted.

Water resistance is achieved by the gaskets which forms a watertight seal, used in conjunction with a sealant applied on the case to help keep water out. The material of the case must also be tested in order to pass as water resistant.

None of the tests defined by ISO 2281 for the Water Resistant mark are suitable to qualify a watch for scuba diving. Such watches are designed for everyday life and must be water resistant during exercises such as swimming. They can be worn in different temperature and pressure conditions but are under no circumstances designed for scuba diving.

The standards for diving watches are regulated by the ISO 6425 international standard. The watches are tested in static or still water under 125% of the rated (water)pressure, thus a watch with a 200 metre rating will be water resistant if it is stationary and under 250 metres of static water. The testing of the water resistance is fundamentally different from non-dive watches, because every watch has to be fully tested. Besides water resistance standards to a minimum of 100 metre depth rating ISO 6425 also provides eight minimum requirements for mechanical diver's watches for scuba diving (quartz and digital watches have slightly differing readability requirements). For diver's watches for mixed-gas saturation diving two additional requirements have to be met.

Watches are classified by their degree of water resistance, which roughly translates to the following (1 metre = 3.281 feet):

Water resistance rating	Suitability
Water Resistant 30 m or 50 m	Suitable for washing hands. 50 m suitable for showering and light swimming.
Water Resistant 100 m	Suitable for recreational surfing, swimming, snorkeling, sailing and water sports.
Water Resistant 200 m	Suitable for professional marine activity and serious surface water sports.
Diver's 100 m	Minimum ISO standard (ISO 6425) for scuba diving at depths not requiring helium gas.
Diver's 200 m or 300 m	Suitable for scuba diving at depths not requiring helium gas.
Diver's 300+ m helium safe	Suitable for saturation diving (helium enriched environment).

Some watches use bar instead of meters, which may then be multiplied by 10, and then subtracted by 10. This is because 1 bar is equal to one atmosphere or 10 metres of water (therefore 1 bar at the surface and one more each 10 metres). to be approximately equal to the rating based on metres. Therefore, a 5 bar watch is equivalent to a 40 metre watch. Some watches are rated in atmospheres (atm), which are roughly equivalent to bar.

Sport

One of the fastest growing segments of the Watch industry is the "Sport" watch. Made for both function and style these watches often contain extra features like compasses, altimeters, barometers, and thermometers. Some of the higher end sport watches will even have a "heart rate monitor".

See also

American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute

List of watch manufacturers

Marine chronometer

National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors

Tachymeter

References

External links

Sport Watch

Origins of Waltham Model 57

Philadelphia Exhibition 1876 Report to the Federal High Council by Ed. Favre-Perret (1877)

American and Swiss Watchmaking in 1876 by Jacques David

The Watch Factories of America Past and Present by Henry G. Abbott (1888)

Watchmaking and the American System of Manufacturing (2009)

Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH

UK patent GB218487, Improvements relating to wrist watches, 1923 patent resulting from John Harwood's invention of a practical self-winding watch mechanism.

The Most Expensive Watches

Category:Clocks Category:Horology Category:Time Category:Fashion accessories

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Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	Amy Winehouse
alt	Amy Winehouse at the Eurockéennes festival in France (2007)
background	solo_singer
birth name	Amy Jade Winehouse
birth date	September 14, 1983
birth place	Southgate, London, UK
death date	July 23, 2011
death place	Camden, London, UK
genre	Soul, R&B;, jazz, blues
instrument	Vocals, guitar, drums
occupation	Singer, songwriter, composer, arranger
years active	1993–2011
label	Island, Lioness, Universal Republic (U.S.)
associated acts	Dionne Bromfield, Mark Ronson, Tony Bennett, Nas, Zalon, Heshima, Paul Weller, The Rolling Stones, Lily Allen
website	}}

Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was an English singer and songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B;, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, ''Frank'', was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Her 2006 follow-up album, ''Back to Black'', led to six Grammy Award nominations and five wins, tying the then record for the most wins by a female artist in a single night, and made Winehouse the first British female to win five Grammys, including three of the "Big Four": Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

In 2007 she won a BRIT Award for Best British Female Artist; she had also been nominated for Best British Album. She won the Ivor Novello Award three times: once in 2004 for Best Contemporary Song (musically and lyrically) for "Stronger Than Me", once in 2007 for Best Contemporary Song for "Rehab", and once in 2008 for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Love Is a Losing Game".

Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning on 23 July 2011. Her album ''Back to Black'' subsequently became the UK's best selling album of the 21st century thus far.

Early life

Amy Winehouse was born in the Southgate area of North London to a Jewish family, with some Russian ancestry on her mother's side who also influenced her interest in jazz. Her father Mitchell "Mitch" Winehouse, a taxi driver, her mother Janis Winehouse, a pharmacist, and her grandmother, Cynthia, are who we credit for raising her and her older brother, Alex, who was four years old upon her birth.

Mitch often sang Frank Sinatra songs to young Amy, who also took to a constant habit of singing to the point that teachers found it difficult keeping her quiet in class. Winehouse's parents separated when she was nine.

When Winehouse was nine years old, Cynthia, her grandmother and once engaged to Ronnie Scott, suggested she attend the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School for furthering her vocal education. She attended the Earnshaw school for four years and founded a short-lived rap group called Sweet 'n' Sour with Juliette Ashby, her childhood friend before seeking full-time training at Sylvia Young Theatre School; however, Winehouse was allegedly expelled at 14 for "not applying herself" and also for piercing her nose. (Sylvia Young herself has denied this – "She changed schools at 15 – I've heard it said she was expelled; she wasn't. I'd never have expelled Amy.") She also appeared in an episode of ''The Fast Show'', 1997, with other children from the Sylvia Young School and later attended The Mount School, Mill Hill, the BRIT School in Selhurst, Croydon, Southgate School and then Ashmole School.

Music career

Early career

After toying around with her brother Alex's guitar, Winehouse received her first guitar when she was 13 and began writing music a year later. Soon after, she began working for a living, including, at one time, as an entertainment journalist for the World Entertainment News Network, in addition to singing with local group the Bolsha Band. In July 2000 she became the featured female vocalist with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra; her influences were to include Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. Her boyfriend at the time, soul singer Tyler James, sent her demo tape to an A&R; person. Her future A&R; representative at Island/Universal, Darcus Beese, heard of her by accident when the manager of The Lewinson Brothers showed him some productions of his clients, which featured Winehouse as key vocalist. When he asked who the singer was, the manager told him he was not allowed to say. Having decided that he wanted to sign her, it took several months of asking around for Beese to eventually discover who the singer was. However, Winehouse had already recorded a number of songs and signed a publishing deal with EMI by this time. Incidentally, she formed a working relationship with producer Salaam Remi through these record publishers.

Beese introduced Winehouse to his boss, Nick Gatfield, and the Island head shared his enthusiasm in signing the young artist. Winehouse was signed to Island/Universal, as rival interest in Winehouse had started to build to include representatives of EMI and Virgin starting to make moves. Beese told ''HitQuarters'' that he felt the reason behind the excitement, over an artist who was an atypical pop star for the time, was due to a backlash against reality TV music shows, which included audiences starved for fresh, genuine young talent.

Winehouse's greatest love was 1960s girl groups. Her stylist, Alex Foden, borrowed her "instantly recognisable" beehive hairdo (a weave) and she borrowed her Cleopatra makeup from The Ronettes. Her imitation was so successful, as the ''Village Voice'' reports: "Ronnie Spector—who, it could be argued, all but invented Winehouse's style in the first place when she took the stage at the Brooklyn Fox Theater with her fellow Ronettes more than 40 years ago—was so taken aback at a picture of Winehouse in the ''New York Post'' that she exclaimed, "I don't know her, I never met her, and when I saw that pic, I thought, 'That's me!' But then I found out, no, it's Amy! I didn't have on my glasses."

New York Times reporter, Guy Trebay, discussed the multiplicity of influences on Winehouse's style. Trebay noted: "her stylish husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, may have influenced her look." Additionally, Trebay observes: :She was a 5-foot-3 almanac of visual reference, most famously to Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes, but also to the white British soul singer Mari Wilson, less famous for her sound than her beehive; to the punk god Johnny Thunders...; to the fierce council-house chicks... (see: Dior and Chanel runways, 2007 and 2008); to the rat-combed biker molls photographed by the Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger in the 1960s; to a lineage of bad girls, extending from Cleopatra to Louise Brooks’s Lulu and including Salt-n-Pepa, to irresistible man traps that always seemed to come to the same unfortunate end.

Major label success and ''Frank''

Winehouse's debut album, ''Frank'', was released on 20 October 2003. Produced mainly by Salaam Remi, many songs were influenced by jazz and, apart from two covers, every song was co-written by Winehouse. The album received positive reviews with compliments over the "cool, critical gaze" in its lyrics and brought comparisons of her voice to Sarah Vaughan, Macy Gray and others.

The album entered the upper levels of the UK album chart in 2004 when it was nominated for BRIT Awards in the categories of "British Female Solo Artist" and "British Urban Act". It went on to achieve platinum sales. Later in 2004 she won the Ivor Novello (songwriting) Award for Best Contemporary Song, alongside Salaam Remi, with her contribution to the first single, "Stronger Than Me". The album also made the short list for the 2004 Mercury Music Prize. In the same year she performed at the Glastonbury Festival, the V Festival, the Montreal International Jazz Festival (7 July 2004, at the Club Soda), and on the Jazzworld stage. After the release of the album, Winehouse commented that she was "only 80 percent behind [the] album" because of the inclusion by her record label of certain songs and mixes she disliked. Additional singles from the album were "Take the Box", "In My Bed"/"You Sent Me Flying" and "Pumps"/"Help Yourself".

International success and ''Back to Black''

In contrast to her jazz-influenced former album, Winehouse's focus shifted to the girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Winehouse hired New York singer Sharon Jones's longtime band, the Dap-Kings to back her up in the studio and on tour. In May 2006 Winehouse's demonstration tracks such as "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab" appeared on Mark Ronson's New York radio show on East Village Radio. These were some of the first new songs played on the radio after the release of "Pumps" and both were slated to appear on her second album. The 11-track album was produced entirely by Salaam Remi and Ronson, with the production credits being split between them. Ronson said in a 2010 interview that he liked working with Winehouse because she was blunt when she did not like his work. Promotion of ''Back to Black'' soon began and, in early October 2006 Winehouse's official website was relaunched with a new layout and clips of previously unreleased songs. ''Back to Black'' was released in the UK on 30 October 2006. It went to number one on the UK Albums Chart numerous times, and entered at number seven on the ''Billboard'' 200 in the US. It was the best-selling album in the UK of 2007, selling 1.85 million copies over the course of the year.

The album spawned a number of singles. The first single released from the album was the Ronson-produced "Rehab". The song reached the top ten in the UK and the US. ''Time'' magazine named "Rehab" the Best Song of 2007. Writer Josh Tyrangiel praised Winehouse for her confidence, saying, "What she is is mouthy, funny, sultry, and quite possibly crazy" and "It's impossible not to be seduced by her originality. Combine it with production by Mark Ronson that references four decades worth of soul music without once ripping it off, and you've got the best song of 2007." The album's second single and lead single in the US, "You Know I'm No Good", was released in January 2007 with a remix featuring rap vocals by Ghostface Killah. It ultimately reached number 18 on the UK singles chart. The title track, "Back to Black", was released in the UK in April 2007 and peaked at number 25, but was more successful across mainland Europe. "Tears Dry on Their Own", "Love Is a Losing Game" and "Just Friends" were also released as singles, but failed to achieve the same level of success.

A deluxe edition of ''Back to Black'' was also released on 5 November 2007 in the UK. The bonus disc features B-sides, rare, and live tracks, as well as "Valerie". Winehouse's debut DVD ''I Told You I Was Trouble: Live in London'' was released the same day in the UK and 13 November in the US. It includes a live set recorded at London's Shepherds Bush Empire and a 50-minute documentary charting the singer's career over the previous four years. ''Frank'' was released in the United States on 20 November 2007 to positive reviews. The album debuted at number 61 on the Billboard 200 chart.

In addition to her own album she collaborated with other artists on singles. Winehouse was a vocalist on the song "Valerie" on Ronson's solo album ''Version''. The song peaked at number two in the UK, upon its October single release. The song was nominated for a 2008 Brit Award for "Best British Single". Her work with ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena, "B Boy Baby", was released on 17 December 2007. It served as the fourth single from Buena's solo debut album, ''Real Girl''.

Continued success and acclaim

By year's end Winehouse had garnered numerous accolades and awards. The singer won 2008 Grammy Awards in the categories of Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the single "Rehab", while her album ''Back to Black'' was nominated for Album of the Year and won the Best Pop Vocal Album award. Producer Mark Ronson's work with her won the award in the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical category. The singer also earned a Grammy in the Best New Artist category. This earned Winehouse an entry in the 2009 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Grammy Awards won by a British Female Act. She performed "You Know I’m No Good" and "Rehab" at the awards ceremony via satellite, as her visa approval came through too late for her to travel to the US. She said "This is for London because Camden town ain't burning down", in reference to the Camden Market fire. After the Grammy Awards, the album's sales increased catapulting ''Back to Black'' to number two on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200 after initially peaking at number seven. On 13 January 2008, ''Back to Black'' held the number one position on the ''Billboard'' Pan European charts for the third straight week. In January 2008 Universal Music International said it believed that there was a correlation between number of albums sold and the extensive media coverage the singer had received.

thumb|left|Performing at Eurockéennes in Belfort, Territoire de Belfort, France on 29 June 2007 A special deluxe edition of ''Back to Black'' topped the UK album charts on 2 March 2008. The original edition of the album resided at the number 30 position, in its 68th week on the charts, while "Frank" charted at number 35. By 12 March the album had sold a total of 2,467,575 copies, 318,350 of those in the previous 10 weeks, putting the album on the UK's top 10 best-selling albums of the 21st century for the first time. On 7 April, ''Back to Black'' was residing at the top position on the pan-European charts for the sixth consecutive and thirteenth aggregate week. ''Back to Black'' was the world's seventh biggest selling album for 2008. These sales helped keep Universal Music's recorded music division from dropping to levels experienced by the overall music market.

At the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards, Winehouse became the first artist to receive two nominations for the top award, best song, musically and lyrically. She won the award for "Love Is a Losing Game" and was nominated for "You Know I'm No Good". "Rehab", a Novello winner for best contemporary song in 2006, also received a 2008 nomination for best-selling British song. Winehouse was nominated for a MTV Europe Award in the ''Act of The Year'' category. ''Amy Winehouse – The Girl Done Good: A Documentary Review'', a 78-minute DVD, was released on 14 April 2008. The documentary features interviews with those who knew her at a young age, helped her gain success, jazz music experts, as well as music and pop culture specialists. A clip of Winehouse's music was included in the "Roots and Influences" area that looked at connections between different artists at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, which opened in December 2008. One thread started with Billie Holiday continued with Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige and finished with Winehouse. In a poll of United States residents conducted for VisitBritain by Harris Interactive that was released in March 2009, one fifth of those polled indicated they had listened to Winehouse's music during the previous year. Winehouse performed with Rhythms del Mundo on their cover of the Sam Cooke song "Cupid" for an ''Artists Project Earth'' benefit album that was released on 13 July 2009.

On the week of July 26, after Winehouse's death, ''Frank'', ''Back To Black'', and the ''Back To Black'' EP re-entered the ''Billboard'' 200 at number 57, number 9, and number 152 respectively with the album climbing to number 4 the following week. ''Back To Black'' also topped the ''Billboard'' Digital Albums chart on the same week and was the second best seller at iTunes. "Rehab" re-entered and topped the ''Billboard'' Digital Songs chart as well, selling up to 38,000 more digital downloads. As of August 2011 "Back to Black" was the best selling album in the United Kingdom in the 21st Century.

Final projects

Winehouse and Mark Ronson contributed a cover of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" to the Quincy Jones tribute album ''Q Soul Bossa Nostra'' released 9 November 2010. Winehouse and drummer ?uestlove of the Roots had agreed to form a group. Winehouse's problems obtaining a visa delayed the still unnamed group from working together. Producer Salaam Remi had already created some material with Winehouse as part of the project. According to a newspaper report, Universal Music pressed her regarding new material in 2008. According to that same report Winehouse as of 2 September had not been near a recording studio. It was noted that she had touring obligations during the summer and also that if an album was quickly recorded, it would be at least a year before an album could be released. In late October Winehouse's spokesman was quoted as saying that Winehouse had not been given a deadline to complete her third album, for which she was learning to play drums.

During her 2009 stay in Saint Lucia, Winehouse worked on new music with producer Salaam Remi. Island claimed that a new album would be due in 2010; Island co-president Darcus Beese said, "I've heard a couple of song demos that have absolutely floored me". In July 2010 Winehouse was quoted as saying her next album would be released no later than January 2011, saying "It’s going to be very much the same as my second album, where there's a lot of jukebox stuff and songs that are... just jukebox, really." Mark Ronson said in July 2010 that he had not started to record the album.

Winehouse's last recording was a duet with American singer Tony Bennett for his latest album, ''Duets II'', which was released on September 20, 2011. Their single from the album, "Body and Soul," was released on 14 September 2011 on MTV and VH1 to commemorate what would have been her 28th birthday. Her father, Mitch Winehouse, launched The Amy Winehouse Foundation with the goal of raising awareness and support for organizations that help vulnerable, young adults with problems such as addiction. Proceeds from "Body and Soul" will benefit The Amy Winehouse Foundation. The song received the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 54th Grammy Awards on February 12th, 2012. Winehouse's father, Mitch Winehouse, picked up the award at the awards ceremony with his wife Janis, saying, "We shouldn't be here. Our darling daughter should be here. These are the cards that we're dealt."

When interviewed by Jon Stewart on ''The Daily Show'' on 29 September 2011, Bennett stated that in hindsight, he believed Amy: ::was in trouble at that time because she had a couple of engagements that she didn't keep up. But what people didn't realize at that time, that she really knew, and in fact I didn't even know it when we were making the record, and now looking at the whole thing; she knew that she was in a lot of trouble; that she wasn't going to live. And it wasn't drugs. It was alcohol toward the end. . . . It was such a sad thing because . . . she was the only singer that really sang what I call the 'right way' because she was a great jazz-pop singer. . . . She was really a great jazz singer. A true jazz singer. And I regret that because that's the 'right way' to sing.

An album of previously unreleased material, entitled ''Lioness: Hidden Treasures'', was released on December 6, 2011.

Artistry

Influence

British singer Adele has credited Winehouse's success in the United States for making her and fellow British singer Duffy's journey to the United States "a bit smoother". American singer Lady Gaga credited Winehouse with paving the way for her rise to the top of the charts. She appeared to be using a metaphorical analogy to explain that Winehouse made it easier for unconventional women to have mainstream pop success. Raphael Saadiq, Anthony Hamilton, and John Legend said "Amy Winehouse was produced by people who wanted to create a marketing coup. The positive side is that it reacquainted an audience with this music and played an introductory role for others. This reinvigorated the genre by overcoming the vintage aspect".

After the release of Back to Black, record companies sought out female artists with a similar sound and fearless and experimental female musicians in general. Adele and Duffy were the second wave of artists with a sound similar to Winehouse's. A third wave of female musicians that has emerged since the album was released are led by VV Brown, Florence and the Machine, La Roux and Little Boots. In February 2010 rapper Jay-Z credited Winehouse with revitalising British music, saying, "There's a strong push coming out of London right now, which is great. It's been coming ever since I guess Amy (Winehouse). I mean always, but I think Amy, this resurgence was ushered in by Amy." In March 2011 the ''New York Daily News'' ran an article attributing the continuing wave of British female artists that have been successful in the United States to Winehouse and her absence. ''Spin'' magazine music editor Charles Aaron was quoted as saying "Amy Winehouse was the Nirvana moment for all these women," "They can all be traced back to her in terms of attitude, musical styles or fashion". According to Keith Caulfield, chart manager for ''Billboard'', "Because of Amy, or the lack thereof, the marketplace was able to get singers like Adele and Duffy," "Now those ladies have brought on the new ones, like Eliza Doolittle, Rumer and Ellie."

Live performances

Winehouse toured in conjunction with the ''Back to Black'' album's release. She performed headlining gigs in September and November 2006, including one of the ''Little Noise Sessions'' charity concerts at the Union Chapel, Islington. On 31 December 2006, Winehouse appeared on Jools Holland's Annual Hootenanny and performed a cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" along with Paul Weller and Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. She also performed Toots & the Maytals' "Monkey Man". She began a run of another 14 gigs beginning in February 2007. At his request, Bruce Willis introduced Winehouse before her performance of "Rehab" at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards. Winehouse made awards organizers nervous when she went on a Las Vegas jaunt in the hours before the show. During the summer of 2007, Winehouse performed at various festivals, including UK's Glastonbury Festival, Chicago's Lollapalooza festival, Rock Werchter and Baltimore's Virgin Music Festival.

Winehouse's tour, however, did not go as well. In November 2007 the opening night of a 17-date tour was marred by booing and walkouts at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. A music critic for the ''Birmingham Mail'' said it was "one of the saddest nights of my life...I saw a supremely talented artist reduced to tears, stumbling around the stage and, unforgivably, swearing at the audience." Other concerts ended similarly, with, for example, fans at her Hammersmith Apollo performance saying that she "looked highly intoxicated throughout", until she announced on 27 November 2007, that her performances and public appearances were cancelled for the remainder of 2007, citing doctor advice to take a complete rest. A statement issued by concert promoter Live Nation blamed "the rigours involved in touring and the intense emotional strain that Amy has been under in recent weeks" for the decision.

On 20 February 2008, Winehouse performed at the 2008 BRIT Awards, performing "Valerie" with Mark Ronson, followed by "Love Is a Losing Game". She urged the crowd to "make some noise for my Blake." In Paris she performed what was described as a "well-executed 40 minute" set at the opening of a Fendi boutique. Although her father, manager and various members of her touring team reportedly tried to dissuade her, Winehouse performed at the Rock in Rio Lisboa festival in Portugal in May 2008. Although the set was plagued by a late arrival and problems with her voice, the crowd warmed to her. In addition to her own material she performed two Specials covers. Winehouse performed at Nelson Mandela's 90th Birthday Party concert at London's Hyde Park on the 27 June, and the next day at the Glastonbury Festival. On 12 July at the Oxegen Festival she performed a well-received 50 minute set which was followed the next day by a 14 song set at T in the Park. On 16 August she played at the Staffordshire leg of the V Festival, and the following day played the Chelmsford leg of the festival. Organizers said that Winehouse attracted the biggest crowds of the festival. Audience reaction was reported as mixed. On 6 September she was the headliner at Bestival. She performed what was described as a polished set which ended with her storming off the stage. Her hour late arrival caused her set to be cut off at the halfway point due to a curfew.

In May 2009 Winehouse returned to performing at a jazz festival in Saint Lucia amid torrential downpours and technical difficulties. During her hour long set it was reported she was unsteady on her feet and had trouble remembering lyrics. She apologised to the crowd for being "bored" and ended her set by walking off the stage in the middle of a song. To a cheering crowd on 23 August at the V festival, Winehouse sang with The Specials on their songs "You're Wondering Now" and "Ghost Town".

In July 2010 she performed "Valerie" with Mark Ronson at a movie premiere. She sang lead but forgot some of the song's lyrics. In October Winehouse performed a four song set to promote her fashion line. In December 2010 Winehouse played a 40 minute concert at a Russian oligarch's party in Moscow. Guests included other Russian tycoons and Russian show business stars. The tycoon hand picked the songs she played.

During January 2011, she played five dates in Brazil, with opening acts of Janelle Monáe and Mayer Hawthorne. On 11 February 2011, Winehouse cut short a performance in Dubai following booing from the audience. Winehouse was reported to be tired, distracted and "tipsy" during the performance.

On 18 June 2011, Winehouse started her 12-leg 2011 European tour in Belgrade. Local media described her performance as a scandal and disaster, and she was booed off the stage due to her apparently being too drunk to perform. It was reported that she was unable to remember the city she was in, the lyrics of her songs or – when trying to introduce them – the names of the members of her band. The local press also claimed that Winehouse was forced to perform by her bodyguards, who didn't allow her to leave the stage when she tried to do so. She then pulled out of performances in Istanbul and Athens which had been scheduled for the following week. On 21 June it was announced that she had cancelled all shows of her European tour and would be given "as long as it takes" to sort herself out.

Winehouse's last public appearance took place at Camden's Roundhouse, London on 20 July 2011, when she made a surprise guest appearance on stage to support her goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield, who was singing "Mama Said" with The Wanted.

Club nights

On 10 July 2008, Winehouse launched her own club night, ''Snakehips at the Monarch'', in the Camden Monarch venue in London. Although billed as a DJ battle between her and another DJ, she stayed behind the decks swaying as another person actually played 1960s music. She appeared at another ''Snakehips'' event at the Monarch on the night of 11 September. After reportedly arriving two hours late, she spun music and played a short acoustic set.

Other ventures

Winehouse joined a campaign to stop a block of flats being built beside the George Tavern, a famous London East End music venue. Campaign supporters feared the residential development would end the spot's lucrative sideline as a film and photo location, on which it relies to survive. As part of a breast cancer awareness campaign, Winehouse appeared in a revealing photograph for the April 2008 issue of ''Easy Living'' magazine. Winehouse had an estimated £10m fortune, tying her for tenth place in the 2008 ''Sunday Times'' listing of the wealth of musicians under age 30. The following year her fortune had dropped to an estimated £5m. Her finances are run by Mitch and Janis Winehouse. It was reported she earned about £1m singing at two private parties during Paris Fashion Week. as well as another £1m to perform at a Moscow Art Gallery for Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Winehouse loaned a vintage dress used in her video for "Tears Dry on Their Own" as well as a DVD to the British Music Experience, a new museum dedicated to the history of British pop music. The museum, located in The O2, opened on 9 March 2009.

In January 2009, Winehouse announced that she was launching her own record label. The first act on her Lioness Records is Winehouse's 13-year-old goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield. Her first album, featuring covers of classic soul records, was released on 12 October 2009. Winehouse is the backing singer on several tracks on the album and she performed backing vocals for Bromfield on the television programme ''Strictly Come Dancing'' on 10 October.

Winehouse and her family are the subject of a 2009 documentary shot by Daphne Barak titled ''Saving Amy''.

Winehouse entered into a joint venture in 2009 with EMI to launch a range of wrapping paper and gift cards containing song lyrics from her album ''Back to Black''.

On 8 January 2010, a television documentary, ''My Daughter Amy'', aired on Channel 4.

''Saving Amy'' was released as a paperback book in January 2010.

Winehouse collaborated on a 17 piece fashion collection with the Fred Perry label. It was released for sale in October 2010. According to Fred Perry's marketing director "We had three major design meetings where she was closely involved in product style selection and the application of fabric, colour and styling details,” and gave "crucial input on proportion, colour and fit”. The collection consists of "vintage-inspired looks including Capri pants, a bowling dress, a trench coat, pencil skirts, a longline argyle sweater and a pink-and-black checkerboard-printed collared shirt". At the behest her family three forthcoming collections up to and including autumn/winter 2012 that she had designed prior to her death will be released.

Personal life

With the paparazzi taking photographs of her wherever they could, Winehouse obtained an injunction against a leading paparazzi agency (Big Pictures) under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the resultant court order banning them from following her. Photographers were also banned from following her within 100 metres of her home and photographing Winehouse in her home or the home of her friends and family. According to a newspaper report, sources close to the singer said legal action was taken out of concern for the safety of Winehouse and those close to her.

Relationships

Winehouse dated chef-musician Alex Clare (sometimes referred to as Alex Claire) in 2006, while on the outs with her on-off boyfriend and future husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. Clare famously sold his story to the ''News of the World'', which published it under the headline “Bondage Crazed Amy Just Can’t Beehive in Bed”.

She married Fielder-Civil (born August 1978), a former video production assistant, on 18 May 2007, in Miami Beach, Florida. Fielder-Civil was a "dropout" of Bourne Grammar School, who moved to London at aged 16 from his native Lincolnshire. In a June 2007 interview, Winehouse admitted she could sometimes be violent toward him after she had been drinking, saying "if he says one thing I don't like then I'll chin him". In August 2007, they were photographed, bloodied and bruised, in the streets of London after an alleged fight, although she contended her injuries were self-inflicted. American men's campaigner Glenn Sacks condemned Winehouse for what he called her "bragging" about abusing her husband, saying that "a male abuser would have been locked up, stigmatised, and vilified".

Winehouse's parents and in-laws publicly reported their numerous concerns, citing fears that the two might commit suicide, with Fielder-Civil's father encouraging fans to boycott her music. Fielder-Civil was quoted in a British tabloid as saying he introduced her to crack cocaine and heroin. During a visit with Mitch Winehouse at the prison in July 2008, Fielder-Civil reportedly said that they would cut themselves to ease the pain of withdrawal.

From 21 July 2008 to 25 February 2009, Fielder-Civil was imprisoned following his guilty plea on charges of trying to pervert the course of justice as well as a charge of grievous bodily harm with intent. The incident, in July 2007, involved an assault on a pub landlord that resulted in a broken cheek. According to the prosecution the landlord accepted £200,000 as part of a deal to "effectively throw the [court] case and not turn up". The prosecution testified that the money used to pay off the landlord belonged to Winehouse, but that Winehouse pulled out of a meeting with the men involved in the plot, because she had to attend an awards ceremony.

Winehouse was spotted with aspiring actor Josh Bowman on holiday in Saint Lucia in early January 2009, saying she was "in love again, and I don't need drugs." She commented that the "whole marriage was based on doing drugs" and that "for the time being I've just forgotten I'm even married." On 12 January, Winehouse's spokesman confirmed that "papers have been received" for what Fielder-Civil's solicitor has said are divorce proceedings based on a claim of adultery. On 25 February, Blake Fielder-Civil was quoted as saying that he planned to continue divorce proceedings to give himself a drug-free fresh start. In March, Winehouse was quoted in a magazine as saying, "I still love Blake and I want him to move into my new house with me – that was my plan all along ... I won't let him divorce me. He's the male version of me and we're perfect for each other." Uncontested, the divorce was granted on 16 July 2009 and became final on 28 August 2009. Upon his request Fielder-Civil received no money in the settlement. She dated director Reg Traviss for approximately two years before her death.

Substance abuse and mental health issues

Winehouse's battles with substance abuse were the subject of much media attention. In 2005, she went through a period of drinking, heavy drug use, violent mood swings and weight loss.; people who saw her during the end of that year and early 2006 reported a rebound that coincided with the writing of ''Back to Black''. Her family believes that the mid-2006 death of her grandmother, who was a stabilising influence, set her off into addiction. In August 2007, Winehouse cancelled a number of shows in the UK and Europe, citing exhaustion and ill health. She was hospitalised during this period for what was reported as an overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol. In various interviews, she admitted to having such problems with self-harm, depression and eating disorders.

Winehouse told a magazine that the drugs were to blame for her hospitalisation and that "I really thought that it was over for me then." Soon after, Winehouse's father commented that when he had made public statements regarding her problems, he was using the media because it seemed the only way to get through to her. In an interview with ''The Album Chart Show'' on British television, Winehouse said she was manic depressive and not alcoholic, adding that that sounded like "an alcoholic in denial". A U.S. reporter writes that Winehouse was a "victim of mental illness in a society that doesn't understand or respond to mental illness with great effectiveness".

On 2 December 2007, images of the singer outside her home in the early morning hours, barefoot and wearing only a bra and jeans, appeared on the internet and in tabloid newspapers. In a statement, her spokesman blamed paparazzi harassment for the incident. The spokesman reported that the singer was in a physician-supervised programme and was channelling her difficulties by writing a lot of music. The British tabloid ''The Sun'' posted a video of a woman, alleged to be Winehouse, apparently smoking crack cocaine and speaking of having taken ecstasy and valium. Winehouse's father moved in with her, and Island Records, her record label, announced the abandonment of plans for an American promotion campaign on her behalf. In late January 2008, Winehouse reportedly entered a rehabilitation facility for a two-week treatment program.

On 23 January 2008, the video was passed on to the Metropolitan Police, who questioned her on 5 February. No charges were brought. On 26 March 2008, Winehouse's spokesman said she was "doing well" and denied a published report in a British tabloid that consideration was being given to having her return to rehab. Her record company reportedly believed that her recovery remained fragile. By late April 2008, her erratic behaviour, including an allegation of assault, caused fear that her drug rehabilitation efforts have been unsuccessful, leading to efforts by Winehouse's father and manager to seek assistance in having her sectioned. Her dishevelled appearance during and after a scheduled club night in September sparked new rumours of a relapse. Photographers were quoted as saying she appeared to have cuts on her legs and arms.

According to Winehouse's physician Winehouse quit illegal substances in 2008. In an October 2010 interview, Winehouse speaking of her decision to quit drugs said "I literally woke up one day and was like, 'I don’t want to do this any more”. Drinking alcohol emerged as a problem with Winehouse abstaining for a few weeks then lapsing. The physician said that Winehouse was treated with Librium for alcohol withdrawal and anxiety, and underwent psychologist and a psychiatrist reviews in 2010, but refused psychological therapy.

Violence and legal difficulties

In 2006, Winehouse admitted punching a fan in the face for criticising her having taken Blake Fielder-Civil as a husband. She then attacked her spouse as he attempted to calm her down, kneeing him in the crotch.

In October 2007, Winehouse and her then-husband were arrested in Bergen, Norway for possession of seven grams of marijuana. The couple were later released and fined 3850 kroner (around £350). Winehouse first appealed the fines, claiming she was "duped" into confessing, but later dropped the appeal.

On 26 April 2008, Winehouse was cautioned after she admitted to police she slapped a 38 year-old man in the face, a "common assault" offence. She voluntarily turned herself in and was held overnight. Police said, at her arrival she was "in no fit state" to be interviewed. Winehouse was arrested on 7 May 2008 on suspicion of possessing drugs after a video of her apparently smoking crack cocaine was passed to the police in January, but was released on bail a few hours later because they could not confirm, from the video, what she was smoking. The Crown Prosecution Service considered charging her with possessing a controlled drug and allowing her premises to be used for the supply by others of a controlled drug, but she was cleared when the service could not establish that the substance in the video was a controlled drug. In reaction to the decision, former police commander John O’Connor said it is an "absolute scandal that nothing could be done" about Winehouse "cocking a snook at the law". Some members of Parliament also reacted negatively. Two London residents were subsequently charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine and ecstasy to Winehouse. One of the pair was sentenced to two years in prison on 13 December 2008, while the other received a two-year community order.

On 5 March 2009, Winehouse was arrested and charged with common assault following a claim by a woman that Winehouse hit her in the eye at a September 2008 Prince's Trust charity ball. At the same time, she was reported to have spat at the English socialite Pippa Middleton and to have headbutted a photographer. Winehouse's spokesperson announced the singer cancelled a scheduled United States Coachella Festival appearance in "light of current legal issues". Swearing in under her legal name of Amy Jade Civil, Winehouse appeared in court on 17 March to enter her plea of not guilty. On 23 July her assault trial began with prosecutor Lyall Thompson charging that Winehouse acted with "deliberate and unjustifiable violence" while appearing to be under the influence of alcohol or another substance. The woman, Sharene Flash, testified that Winehouse "punched me forcefully in my right eye. She used a fist, her right one.” Winehouse testified that she did not punch Flash, but tried to push Flash away from her because she was scared of Flash. Winehouse cited her worry that Flash would sell her story to a tabloid, Flash's height advantage, and Flash's "rude" behaviour as reasons for her fear of Flash. On the 24 July, District Judge Timothy Workman ruled that Winehouse was not guilty of the charge. Workman cited the facts that all but two of the witnesses were intoxicated at the time of the incident and that medical evidence did not show "the sort of injury that often occurs when there is a forceful punch to the eye".

On 19 December 2009, Winehouse was arrested again on charges of common assault, plus another charge of public order offence. Winehouse assaulted the front-of-house manager of the Milton Keynes Theatre after he asked her to move from her seat. On 20 January 2010, she admitted common assault and disorderly behaviour. She was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £85 court costs and £100 compensation to the man she attacked.

Respiratory problems

On 23 June 2008, Winehouse's publicist corrected earlier misstatements by Mitch Winehouse that his daughter had early stage emphysema, instead claiming she had signs of what could lead to early-stage emphysema. Mitch Winehouse had also stated that his daughter's lungs were operating at 70 percent capacity and that she had an irregular heartbeat. Mitch Winehouse said that these problems had been caused by her chain smoking crack cocaine. The singer’s father also reported that doctors had warned Winehouse that, if she continued smoking crack cocaine, she would have to wear an oxygen mask and would eventually die. In a radio interview, Mitch Winehouse said the singer was responding "fabulously" to treatment, which included being covered with nicotine patches. British Lung Foundation spokesman Keith Prowse noted this type of condition could be managed with treatment. Prowse also said the condition was not normal for a person her age but "heavy smoking and inhaling other substances like drugs can age the lungs prematurely". Norman H. Edelman of the American Lung Association explained that if she stopped smoking, her lung functions would decline at the rate of a normal person, but continued smoking would lead to a more rapid decline in lung function. Photographs of the singer with a cigarette in her mouth, taken 23 June 2008, were widely published.

Winehouse was released from The London Clinic 24 hours after returning from a temporary leave to perform at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and at a concert in Glastonbury, and continued receiving treatment as an outpatient. In July, 2008 Winehouse stated that she had been diagnosed with "some areas of emphysema" and said she is getting herself together by "eating loads of healthy food, sleeping loads, playing my guitar, making music and writing letters to my husband every day". She also kept a vertical tanning bed in her apartment. Winehouse began precautionary testing on her lungs and chest on 25 October 2008 at the London Clinic for what was reported as a chest infection. Winehouse was in and out of the facility and was granted permission to set her own schedule regarding home leave. She returned to the hospital on 23 November 2008 for a reported reaction to her medication.

Death

Winehouse's bodyguard said that he arrived at her residence three days before her death and felt she was somewhat intoxicated. He observed moderate drinking over the next few days. He observed her "laughing, listening to music and watching TV at 2am the day of her death". According to the bodyguard at 10AM he observed her lying on her bed and tried unsuccessfully to rouse her. This did not raise much suspicion because she usually slept late after a night out. According to the bodyguard shortly after 3pm he checked on her again and observed her lying in the same position as before leading to a further check in which he concluded she was not breathing and had no pulse. He claimed he subsequently called emergency services. At 3:54pm BST on 23 July 2011, two ambulances were called to Winehouse's home in Camden, London. Winehouse was pronounced dead at the scene. Shortly afterwards, the Metropolitan Police confirmed that she had died. After her death was announced, media and camera crews appeared, as crowds gathered near Winehouse’s residence to pay their respects. Forensic investigators entered the flat as police cordoned off the street outside.

Police recovered one small and two large bottles of vodka from her room.

A coroner's inquest reached a verdict of misadventure. The report released on 26 October 2011 explained that Winehouse's blood alcohol content was 416 mg per decilitre at the time of her death, more than five times the legal drink-drive limit. According to the coroner, "The unintended consequences of such potentially fatal levels was her sudden death." Winehouse's record label, Universal Republic, released a statement that read in part: "We are deeply saddened at the sudden loss of such a gifted musician, artist and performer." Many musical artists have since paid tribute to Winehouse including U2, M.I.A., Lady Gaga, Mutya Buena, Bruno Mars, Nicki Minaj, Keisha Buchanan, Rihanna, George Michael, Adele, Kelly Clarkson, Courtney Love, and the American punk rock band Green Day, who wrote a song in her tribute titled "Amy." Family and friends attended Winehouse's funeral on 26 July 2011 at Edgwarebury Lane cemetery in north London. Her mother and father, Janis and Mitch Winehouse, close friend Kelly Osbourne, producer Mark Ronson and her boyfriend Reg Traviss were among those in attendance at the private service led by Rabbi Frank Hellner. Her father delivered the eulogy, saying "Goodnight, my angel, sleep tight. Mummy and Daddy love you ever so much." Carole King's "So Far Away" closed the service with mourners singing along. She was later cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. The family planned to sit a two-day shiva. Winehouse's parents set up a foundation in her name, to help those affected by drug addiction.

Controversy

Winehouse's dichotomous public image of critical and commercial success versus personal turmoil proved to be controversial. ''The New Statesman'' called Winehouse "a filthy-mouthed, down-to-earth diva," while ''Newsweek'' called her "a perfect storm of sex kitten, raw talent and poor impulse control." Karen Heller with ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' summarised the maelstrom this way:

}}

By 2008, her continued drug problems threatened her career. Even as Nick Gatfield, the president of Island Records, toyed with the idea of releasing Winehouse "to deal with her problems", he remarked on her talent, saying, "It’s a reflection of her status [in the U.S.] that when you flick through the TV coverage [of the Grammys] it’s her image they use." Post-Grammys, some questioned whether Winehouse should have been honoured with the awards given her recent personal and drug problems, including Natalie Cole, who introduced Winehouse at the ceremony. Cole (who battled her own substance-abuse problems while winning a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1975) remarked, "I think the girl is talented, gifted, but it's not right for her to be able to have her cake and eat it too. She needs to get herself together." In an opinion newspaper commentary, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said that the alleged drug habits of Winehouse and other celebrities send a bad message "to others who are vulnerable to addiction" and undermine the efforts of other celebrities trying to raise awareness of problems in Africa, now that more cocaine used in Europe passes through Africa. Winehouse's spokesperson called Costa a "ludicrous man" and noted that "Amy has never given a quote about drugs or flaunted it in any way. She's had some problems and is trying to get better. The U.N. should get its own house in order." Following Winehouse's death William Bennett a former director of the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy criticised the Grammy Awards nominating committee along similar lines. Graeme Pearson, the former head of Scotland's drug enforcement agency, criticised Winehouse and Kate Moss for making going to rehab a badge of honour, thus giving the false impression that quitting drugs is easy, because many cannot afford to go to clinics.

Winehouse became a staple in popularity polls due not to her musical contributions, but her lifestyle. The 2008 NME Awards nominated Winehouse in the categories of "Villain of the Year", "Best Solo Artist", and "Best Music DVD"; Winehouse won for "Worst Dressed Performer". In its third annual list, ''Glamour'' magazine named Winehouse the third worst dressed British Woman. Winehouse was ranked number two on Richard Blackwell's 48th annual "Ten Worst Dressed Women" list, behind Victoria Beckham. In an April 2008 poll conducted by Sky News, Winehouse was named the second greatest "ultimate heroine" by the UK population at large, topping the voting for that category of those polled under 25 years old. Psychologist Donna Dawson commented that the results demonstrate women like Winehouse who have "a certain sense of vulnerability or have had to fight against some adversity in their lives” receive recognition. Winehouse was voted the second most hated personality in the United Kingdom in a poll conducted one month later by ''Marketing'' magazine.

Speaking at a discussion entitled ''Winehouse or White House?: Do we go too big on showbiz news?'' Jeff Zycinski, head of BBC Radio Scotland, said the BBC and media in general were complicit in the destruction of celebrities like Winehouse. He said that public interest in the singer's lifestyle does not make her lifestyle newsworthy. Rod McKenzie editor of the BBC Radio One program ''Newsbeat'' replied that "If you play [Amy Winehouse's] music to a certain demographic, those same people want to know what's happening in her private life. If you don't cover it, you're insulting young license fee payers." The British artist M.I.A. was quoted in ''The Guardian'' in 2007 as saying she found Winehouse "really interesting", saying "I once saw her in the street and she was really out of it, so I guess she is really living it out. I think Amy's thing is feeling really weird about what she does and dealing with that." British singer and songwriter Lily Allen was quoted in a Scottish newspaper as saying

Artistic impressions

London's Mall Galleries opened an exhibition in May 2008 that included a sculpture of Winehouse, entitled ''Excess''. The piece, created by Guy Portelli, had a miniature of the singer lying on top of a cracked champagne bottle, with a pool of spilled liquid underneath. The body was covered with what appeared to be tiny pills, while one outstretched hand held a glass. Another piece, a print entitled "Celebrity 1" by artist Charlotte Suckling, was exhibited in the same exhibition. A wax sculpture of Winehouse went on display at the London Madame Tussauds on 23 July 2008. The singer did not attend the unveiling, although her parents did. A sculpture by Marco Perego, entitled "The Only Good Rock Star Is a Dead Rock Star", that depicts Winehouse lying in a pool of blood with an apple and a bullet hole in her head after being shot by American novelist and beat poet William S. Burroughs (in a recreation of the accidental killing of his wife Joan Vollmer), was scheduled to go on display in New York’s Half Gallery on 14 November 2008. The sale price for the sculpture is listed at US $100,000. Perego said of the sculpture "Rock stars are the sacrificial animals of society." Winehouse’s spokesperson said "It’s a funny kind of tribute. The artist seems in thrall to a tabloid persona that is not the real Amy. People often use her image to sell their work."

Discography

;Studio albums:

''Frank'' (2003)

''Back to Black'' (2006)

; Posthumous albums:

''Lioness: Hidden Treasures'' (2011)

Awards and nominations

Among the awards and recognitions for ''Frank'', Winehouse earned an Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song ("Stronger Than Me"), a BRIT Award nomination for Best Female Solo Artist, and an inclusion in Robert Dimery's 2006 book, ''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die''. ''Back to Black'' produced numerous nominations, including two BRIT Awards (Best Female Solo Artist and Best British Album), six Grammy Awards (including five wins), four Ivor Novello Awards, four MTV Europe Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, three World Music Awards, and was nominated for the Mercury Prize (Album of the Year) and a MOBO Awards (Best UK Female). During her career, Winehouse received 23 awards from 60 nominations.

Further recordings

Other than the rare songs on her third album, there are a few extra possible songs that could be released that weren't on her apparent final album. These are the cover versions of 4 songs, 3 of which were performed live on Jools Holland's xmas hootenanny show prior to 2010. The BBC also broadcast another cover song called "Monkey Man". There is also a guitar solo version of "No Greater Love" available via P2P sharing. There was also a song that Bryan Adams wrote for her after they met in a hotel several years before her 3rd album was released, which then may or may not have been recorded - with the interesting connecting point being that Bryan Adams apparently took the photo of his friend Amy that became the cover picture for her 3rd album, as going by the related comment in a section further above. This information comes from a Channel 4 documentary which it covered her rise to fame, leading to her drug abuse an relationship problems - and was first shown on UK tv possibly 1 or 2 years ago before she died, [circa 2010].

See also

27 Club

References

Further reading

;General

Lewis, Pete. "A Blues & Soul Classic Interview With Amy Winehouse Before 'Rehab'" ''Blues & Soul''. April 2004 (reprinted February 2008).

Anderman, Joan. "Of course she should go to rehab." ''Boston Globe''. 15 December 2007.

Gould, Lara; Bull, Sarah; & Satherly, Jessica. "Sordid final hours of a troubled star: Amy Winehouse had 'bought ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine' on the night before tragic death". ''Daily Mail''. 24 July 2011.

Grimwood, Ben. CollegeNews.com. 29 November 2007.

Gundersen, Edna. "Amy Winehouse's sobering transformation could hurt her musical credibility." ''USA TODAY''. 28 January 2008.

Hill, Emily. "Amy Winehouse: her own woman." ''The Guardian''. 31 July 2008

Pareles, Jon. "In Real Time, Amy Winehouse’s Deeper Descent." ''New York Times'' 24 January 2008.

Rosen, Jody. "Dark Star." ''Slate''. 12 February 2008.

Smith, Joan. "There's nothing poetic about Amy's self-destruction" ''The Independent''. 26 June 2008.

The Smoking Gun. BACKSTAGE RIDER: Divas: Amy Winehouse 12 May 2006.

Tyrangiel, Josh. "Trouble Woman." ''TIME''. 24 January 2008.

Vernon, Polly Amy Winehouse: Unplugged ''Harper's Bazaar'' October 2010

July 2009 Mitch Winehouse interview with ''Daily Mirror'' covering a variety of her personal issues

;Books

Barak, Daphne. ''Saving Amy''. New Holland Publishers, 25 January 2010. ISBN 9781847736703

Johnstone, Nick. ''Amy Amy Amy: The Amy Winehouse Story''. Omnibus Press, 1 April 2008. ISBN 9780825636028.

Newkey-Burden, Chas. ''Amy Winehouse: The Biography''. John Blake Publishing, 7 April 2008. ISBN 1844545636.

External links

[ Amy Winehouse] at the All Music Guide

Amy Winehouse collected news and commentary at ''The New York Times''

New York Times fashion retrospective

Slide Show at ''Rolling Stone''

Videos at Island Records on YouTube

Official Video Of Amy Winehouse performing 'Back To Black' Live and Acoustic at SXSW

Category:Amy Winehouse Category:1983 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Alcohol-related deaths in England Category:Alumni of the Sylvia Young Theatre School Category:Blue-eyed soul singers Category:Brit Award winners Category:English people of Jewish descent Category:Deaths by alcohol poisoning Category:English contraltos Category:English female guitarists Category:English-language singers Category:English jazz guitarists Category:English jazz singers Category:English Jews Category:English people convicted of assault Category:English people of Russian descent Category:English rhythm and blues singers Category:English soul singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Jazz-blues musicians Category:Jewish singers Category:Neo soul singers Category:People educated at the BRIT School Category:People from Camden (district) Category:People from Southgate, London Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:People self-identifying as substance abusers Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Republic Records artists Category:Singers from London Category:Torch singers Category:Vocal jazz musicians Category:Female jazz musicians Category:World Music Awards winners

af:Amy Winehouse ar:آمي واينهاوس az:Emi Vaynhauz be:Эмі Уайнхаус be-x-old:Эмі Ўайнгаўс bg:Ейми Уайнхаус bar:Amy Winehouse bs:Amy Winehouse ca:Amy Winehouse cs:Amy Winehouse cy:Amy Winehouse da:Amy Winehouse de:Amy Winehouse et:Amy Winehouse el:Έιμι Γουάινχαουζ es:Amy Winehouse eo:Amy Winehouse eu:Amy Winehouse fa:امی واینهاوس fr:Amy Winehouse fy:Amy Winehouse ga:Amy Winehouse gd:Amy Winehouse gl:Amy Winehouse gan:艾美·環校詩 got:𐌰𐌼𐌰𐍄𐌰 𐍅𐌴𐌹𐌽𐌷𐌿𐍃 ko:에이미 와인하우스 hy:Էմի Ուայնհաուս hr:Amy Winehouse io:Amy Winehouse id:Amy Winehouse ia:Amy Winehouse is:Amy Winehouse it:Amy Winehouse he:איימי ויינהאוס jv:Amy Winehouse ka:ემი უაინჰაუსი la:Amy Winehouse lv:Eimija Vainhausa lb:Amy Winehouse lt:Amy Winehouse hu:Amy Winehouse mk:Ејми Вајнхаус arz:آيمي واينهاوس my:အေမီ ဝိုင်းဟောက်စ် nl:Amy Winehouse ja:エイミー・ワインハウス no:Amy Winehouse nn:Amy Winehouse uz:Amy Winehouse nds:Amy Winehouse pl:Amy Winehouse pt:Amy Winehouse ro:Amy Winehouse ru:Уайнхаус, Эми sq:Amy Winehouse simple:Amy Winehouse sk:Amy Winehouse sl:Amy Winehouse sr:Ејми Вајнхаус sh:Amy Winehouse fi:Amy Winehouse sv:Amy Winehouse tl:Amy Winehouse ta:ஏமி வைன்ஹவுஸ் th:เอมี ไวน์เฮาส์ tr:Amy Winehouse uk:Емі Вайнгауз vi:Amy Winehouse yi:עמי וויינהאוס diq:Amy Winehouse bat-smg:Amy Winehouse zh:艾米·怀恩豪斯

Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	T. B. Joshua
birthname	Temitope Balogun
birth date	June 12, 1963
birth place	Arigidi, Nigeria
occupation	Spiritual Overseer(Prophet of God),Minister, televangelist, Humanitarian
residence	Ikotun-Egbe, Lagos
nationality
spouse	Evelyn Joshua
website	The Synagogue, Church Of All Nations, Emmanuel TV
footnotes	}}

Temitope Balogun Joshua (born June 12, 1963 in Arigidi, Nigeria), commonly referred to as T. B. Joshua, is a Christian, Prophet of God, minister, televangelist, humanitarian and faith healer. He is leader and founder of the ministry organisation ''The Synagogue, Church of All Nations'' (SCOAN). The SCOAN runs a Christian television station called Emmanuel TV, available on satellite and on the Internet via the Streaming Faith broadcast portal.

Biography

According to SCOAN's account, supernatural phenomena are said to have accompanied Joshua's birth and early life. He allegedly remained in his mother's womb for 15 months before he was born. It is also rumoured that a sage had predicted his birth a century earlier.

Joshua attended St. Stephen's Anglican Primary School in Arigidi-Akoko, Nigeria between 1971 and 1977, but failed to complete one year of secondary school education. In school, he was known as 'small pastor' because of his love for the Bible and ability to predict things to come in his local community.

He worked in various casual employments after his schooling had ended, including carrying chicken waste at a poultry farm. He organised Bible studies for local children and attended evening school during this period. Joshua attempted to join the Nigerian military but was thwarted due to a train breakdown that left him stranded en route to the military academy.

The Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN)

In 1989, T. B. Joshua allegedly fasted and prayed for 40 days and 40 nights. He wrote that in a heavenly vision, he had received divine anointing and a covenant from God to start his ministry. In his own words, he said of the experience:

''“… I saw a hand that pointed a Bible to my heart. The Bible entered my heart and my former heart seemed to immerse with the Bible immediately… I heard a voice saying, ‘I am your God. I am giving you a divine commission to go and carry out the work of the Heavenly Father… I would show you the wonderful ways I would reveal myself through you in teaching, preaching, miracles, signs and wonders for the salvation of souls…’ ”''

Following this, Joshua founded the ministry organisation The Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN) initially with only a handful of members. According to the organisation, more than 15,000 members now attend its weekly Sunday service; visitors from outside Nigeria are accommodated in the church facilities.

SCOAN remains controversial both in Nigeria and abroad, claiming regular occurrences of divine miracles. It has published numerous videos claiming to document the healing of incurable illnesses such as HIV/ AIDs and cancer, showing conditions before, during, and after prayer in Jesus' name from T. B. Joshua. Spiritual healing at The SCOAN has been mentioned by Time magazine.

Since June 2010, five ‘Wise Men’ have joined in ministering to people at The SCOAN, purportedly able to prophesy, heal and deliver in the same vein as T.B. Joshua.

The church has branches in Ghana, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Greece.

Humanitarian Work

Another Ministry is the humanitarian arm of SCOAN, with the stated aim of undertaking projects catering to the needs of widows, dwarfs, the elderly, physically challenged, orphans and the destitute.

The church provides scholarships to orphans and children of the underprivileged, with educational support given from primary to tertiary levels. There is also a rehabilitation programme for armed robbers, prostitutes and militants from Nigeria’s volatile Niger Delta region. He is also well known in Nigeria for reconciling broken families and marriages.

SCOAN has established various NGO’s in other countries, including the Passion For Needy in Ghana.

In 2009 Joshua started a football club, My People FC as part of efforts to help the youth. Two members of the team played for Nigeria's Golden Eaglets in the 2009 FIFA U-17 World Cup. Sani Emmanuel, who apparently lived in The SCOAN for several years, was Nigeria's top-scorer and the tournament's MVP. Emmanuel and his colleague Ogenyi Onazi have now signed professional contracts with SS Lazio and are representing Nigeria in the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup.

Following the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, T.B. Joshua rewarded the efforts of the Nigerian Team, presenting the physically challenged medallists with cash gifts and cars.

After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Joshua sent a team of medical personnel and humanitarian workers to the affected area, establishing a field hospital called 'Clinique Emmanuel'.

In recognition of his humanitarian activities, he was awarded a National Honour by the Nigerian government in 2008.

A Forbes blogger estimated Joshua has spent $20m on humanitarian activities in the last three years.

Claims of prophecy

SCOAN claims that Joshua has successfully predicted events in the lives of individuals who attend his church services as well as worldwide events, including a prophecy of Michael Jackson's death and the outcome of various football matches.

Notable visitors

Notable visitors, especially within the African political sphere, have visited SCOAN. These include Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangarai, Ghanaian President John Evans Atta Mills ''(who testified that T.B. Joshua prophesied his ascent to presidency)'', South Africa’s Winnie Mandela, Malawian Vice President Joyce Banda and The Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu.

Emmanuel TV

Emmanuel TV is the television station of SCOAN and broadcasts 24/7. Their Sunday and Monday services are broadcast live. T. B. Joshua's programmes also air 5 days a week on TBN Africa, as well as weekly on a number of local television stations across Africa.

Controversy

There are claims that Joshua's alleged miracles are counterfeit. The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), an umbrella association of Nigerian Pentecostal Churches, refused admission to the Synagogue Church, denouncing T. B. Joshua as an impostor, and querying his background, mentorship and calling to the ministry. Christian critics often refer to T. B. Joshua's unorthodox methods as being not confirmed in the Bible.

Books authored by Joshua

''The Mirror'' ISBN 0-620-37453-5

''The Step Between You And The Cure'' ISBN 0-620-33247-6

''Daily Time With God'' ISBN 0-620-375752

''What The Future Holds'' ISBN 0-620-42843-9

References

External links

Official website of The SCOAN

Emmanuel TV

Streaming Faith

Testimonies Blog

SCOAN London

TB Joshua Watch

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:Nigerian people Category:Faith healers Category:Christian ministers Category:Yoruba people Category:Nigerian Christians Category:Nigerian religious leaders Category:People from Ondo State

de:T. B. Joshua it:T. B. Joshua nl:T.B. Joshua yo:T. B. Joshua

Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	Ella Fitzgerald
background	solo_singer
birth name	Ella Jane Fitzgerald
alias	First Lady of Song, Lady Ella
born	April 25, 1917Newport News, Virginia, U.S.
Origin	Yonkers, New York
died	June 15, 1996Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
genre	Swing, traditional pop, vocal jazz
instrument	PianoVocals
occupation	Vocalist
years active	1934–1993
label	Capitol, Decca, Pablo, Reprise, Verve
website	EllaFitzgerald.com }}

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (Db3 to Db6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

She is considered to be a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 59 year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.

Early life

Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, N.Y, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923.

In her youth Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, "My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it....I tried so hard to sound just like her."

In 1932, her mother died from a heart attack. Following this trauma, Fitzgerald's grades dropped dramatically and she frequently skipped school. Abused by her stepfather, she was first taken in by an aunt and at one point worked as a lookout at a bordello and also with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx. However, when the orphanage proved too crowded she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, a state reformatory. Eventually she escaped and for a time was homeless.

She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Apollo Theater. in Harlem, New York. She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous "Amateur Nights". She had originally intended to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead in the style of Connee Boswell. She sang Boswell's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection," a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of US$25.00.

Later life

Fitzgerald married at least twice, and there is evidence that she may have married a third time. In 1941 she married Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The marriage was annulled after two years.

Her second marriage, in December 1947, was to the famous bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances, whom they christened Ray Brown, Jr. With Fitzgerald and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by her aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953, bowing to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue to perform together.

In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment in Oslo, but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.

Fitzgerald was also notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauza, who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with Chick Webb, remembered that "she didn’t hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music….She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself to herself, for the gig." When, later in her career, the Society of Singers named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, "I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do. I think I do better when I sing."

Already visually impaired by the effects of diabetes, Fitzgerald had both her legs amputated in 1993. In 1996 she died of the disease in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 79. She is buried in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. The career history and archival material from Ella's long career are housed in the Archives Center at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History while her personal music arrangements are at The Library of Congress. Her extensive cookbook collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University while her published sheet music collection is at the Schoenberg Library at UCLA.

Career

Big-band singing

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb here. Webb had already hired singer Charlie Linton to work with the band and was, ''The New York Times'' later wrote, "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a ''diamond in the rough.''" Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.

She began singing regularly with Webb's Orchestra through 1935 at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs with them, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)". But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.

Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" with Ella taking on the role of bandleader. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 sides during her time with the orchestra, most of which, like "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," were "novelties and disposable pop fluff."

The Decca years

In 1942, Fitzgerald left the band to begin a solo career. Now signed to the Decca label, she had several popular hits while recording with such artists as the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys.

With Decca's Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz, and appeared regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts. Fitzgerald's relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels.

With the demise of the Swing era and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."

Her 1945 scat recording of Flying Home (arranged by Vic Schoen) would later be described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade....Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had tried similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the technique with such dazzling inventiveness." Her bebop recording of "Oh, Lady be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.

Perhaps responding to criticism and under pressure from Granz, who felt that Fitzgerald was given unsuitable material to record during this period, her last years on the Decca label saw Fitzgerald recording a series of duets with pianist Ellis Larkins, released in 1950 as ''Ella Sings Gershwin''.

Move to Verve and mainstream success

Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's JATP concerts by 1955. Fitzgerald left Decca and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her.

Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it,' and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman....felt that I should do other things, so he produced ''The Cole Porter Songbook'' with me. It was a turning point in my life."

''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook'', released in 1956, was the first of eight multi-album Songbook sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the ''Great American Songbook''. Fitzgerald's song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience. ''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook'' was the only Songbook on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald (the only Songbook track on which Fitzgerald does not sing).

The Songbook series ended up becoming the singer's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. ''The New York Times'' wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration."

A few days after Fitzgerald's death, ''New York Times'' columnist Frank Rich wrote that in the Songbook series Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis's contemporaneous integration of white and African-American soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians." Frank Sinatra was moved out of respect for Fitzgerald to block Capitol Records from re-releasing his own recordings in a similar, single composer vein.

Ella Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 and 1983; the albums being, respectively, ''Ella Loves Cole'' and ''Nice Work If You Can Get It''. A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with Pablo Records, ''Ella Abraça Jobim'', featuring the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim.

While recording the Songbooks and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers.

In the mid-1950s, Fitzgerald became the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo, after Marilyn Monroe had lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. The incident was turned into a play by Bonnie Greer in 2005.

There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. ''Ella at the Opera House'' shows a typical JATP set from Fitzgerald. ''Ella in Rome'' and ''Twelve Nights In Hollywood'' display her vocal jazz canon. ''Ella in Berlin'' is still one of her best selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning performance of "Mack the Knife" in which she forgets the lyrics, but improvises magnificently to compensate.

Voice

As Will Friedwald noted

Unlike any other singer you could name, Fitzgerald has the most amazing asset in the very sound of her voice: it's easily one of the most beautiful and sonically perfect sounds known to man. Even if she couldn't do anything with it, the instrument that Fitzgerald starts with is dulcet and pure and breathtakingly beautiful. As Henry Pleasants has observed, she has a wider range than most opera singers, and many of the latter, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, are among her biggest fans. And the intonation that goes with the voice is, to put it conservatively, God-like. Fitzgerald simply exists in tune, and she hits every note that there is without the slightest trace of effort. Other singers tend to sound like they're trying to reach up to a note - Fitzgerald always sounds like she's already there. If anything, she's descending from her heavenly perch and swooping down to whatever pitch she wants.

Henry Pleasants, an American classical-music critic, wrote this about her:

She has a lovely voice, one of the warmest and most radiant in its natural range that I have heard in a lifetime of listening to singers in every category. She has an impeccable and ultimately sophisticated rhythmic sense, and flawless intonation. Her harmonic sensibility is extraordinary. She is endlessly inventive.. . it is not so much what she does, or even the way she does it, it's what she does not do. What she does not do, putting it simply as possible, is anything wrong. There is simply nothing in performance to which one would take exception.. . Everything seems to be just right. One would not want it any other way. Nor can one, for a moment imagine it any other way.

Ella Fitzgerald had an extraordinary vocal range. A mezzo-soprano (who sang much lower than most classical contraltos), she had a range of “2 octaves and a sixth from a low D or D flat to a high B flat and possibly higher”.

In 1993, Fitzgerald established the Charitable Foundation that bears her name: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, which continues to help the disadvantaged through grants and donation of new books to at-risk children.

Film and television

In her most notable screen role, Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in Jack Webb's 1955 jazz film ''Pete Kelly's Blues''. The film costarred Janet Leigh and singer Peggy Lee. Even though she had already worked in the movies (she had sung briefly in the 1942 Abbott and Costello film ''Ride 'Em Cowboy''), she was "delighted" when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, and, "at the time....considered her role in the Warner Brothers movie the biggest thing ever to have happened to her." Amid ''The New York Times''' pan of the film when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, "About five minutes (out of ninety-five) suggest the picture this might have been. Take the ingenious prologue...Or take the fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a few spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with her strong mobile features and voice."

Similar to another African-American jazz singer, Lena Horne, Fitzgerald's race precluded major big-screen success. After ''Pete Kelly's Blues'', she appeared in sporadic movie cameos, in ''St. Louis Blues'' (1958), and ''Let No Man Write My Epitaph'' (1960). Much later, she appeared in the 1980s television drama ''The White Shadow''.

She also made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on ''The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom'', ''The Frank Sinatra Show'', and alongside Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé and many others. Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the 'Three Little Maids' song from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta ''The Mikado'' alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore's weekly variety series in 1963. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters' television program, ''Music, Music, Music''.

Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, her most memorable being an ad for Memorex. In the commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass while being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape. The tape was played back and the recording also broke the glass, asking "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" She also starred in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing and scatting to the fast-food chain's longtime slogan, "We do chicken right!"

Her final commercial campaign was for American Express, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

Discography

Collaborations

Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the guitarist Joe Pass, and the bandleaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

Fitzgerald recorded three Verve studio albums with Armstrong, two albums of standards (1956's ''Ella and Louis'' and 1957's ''Ella and Louis Again''), and a third album featured music from the Gershwin musical ''Porgy and Bess''. Fitzgerald also recorded a number of sides with Armstrong for Decca in the early 1950s.

Fitzgerald is sometimes referred to as the quintessential swing singer, and her meetings with Count Basie are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald features on one track on Basie's 1957 album ''One O'Clock Jump'', while her 1963 album ''Ella and Basie!'' is remembered as one of her greatest recordings. With the 'New Testament' Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a young Quincy Jones, this album proved a respite from the 'Songbook' recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. Fitzgerald and Basie also collaborated on the 1972 album ''Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72'', and on the 1979 albums ''Digital III at Montreux'', ''A Classy Pair'' and ''A Perfect Match''.

Fitzgerald and Joe Pass recorded four albums together toward the end of Fitzgerald's career. She recorded several albums with piano accompaniment, but a guitar proved the perfect melodic foil for her. Fitzgerald and Pass appeared together on the albums ''Take Love Easy'' (1973), ''Easy Living'' (1986), ''Speak Love'' (1983) and ''Fitzgerald and Pass... Again'' (1976).

Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington recorded two live albums, and two studio albums. Her ''Duke Ellington Songbook'' placed Ellington firmly in the canon known as the Great American Songbook, and the 1960s saw Fitzgerald and the 'Duke' meet on the Côte d'Azur for the 1966 album ''Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur'', and in Sweden for ''The Stockholm Concert, 1966''. Their 1965 album ''Ella at Duke's Place'' is also extremely well received.

Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen over her long career. The trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, the guitarist Herb Ellis, and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, Oscar Peterson, Lou Levy, Paul Smith, Jimmy Rowles, and Ellis Larkins all worked with Ella mostly in live, small group settings.

Possibly Fitzgerald's greatest unrealized collaboration (in terms of popular music) was a studio or live album with Frank Sinatra. The two appeared on the same stage only periodically over the years, in television specials in 1958 and 1959, and again on 1967's ''A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim'', a show that also featured Antonio Carlos Jobim. Pianist Paul Smith has said, "Ella loved working with [Frank]. Sinatra gave her his dressing room on ''A Man and His Music'' and couldn’t do enough for her." When asked, Norman Granz would cite "complex contractual reasons" for the fact that the two artists never recorded together. Fitzgerald's appearance with Sinatra and Count Basie in June 1974 for a series of concerts at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas was seen as an important incentive for Sinatra to return from his self-imposed retirement of the early 1970s. The shows were a great success, and September 1975 saw them gross $1,000,000 in two weeks on Broadway, in a triumvirate with the Count Basie Orchestra.

Awards, citations and honors

Fitzgerald won thirteen Grammy awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement in 1967. Other major awards and honors she received during her career were the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, National Medal of Art, first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named "Ella" in her honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.

Ella Fitzgerald was a quiet but ardent supporter of many charities and non-profit organizations, including the American Heart Association and the United Negro College Fund. In 1993, she established the "Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation" which continues to fund programs that perpetuate Ella's ideals.

Tributes

In 1997, Newport News, Virginia created a music festival with Christopher Newport University to honor Ella Fitzgerald in her birth city. The Ella Fitzgerald Music Festival is designed to teach the region's youth of the musical legacy of Fitzgerald and jazz. Past performers at the week-long festival include: Diana Krall, Arturo Sandoval, Jean Carne, Phil Woods, Aretha Franklin, Freda Payne, Cassandra Wilson, Ethel Ennis, David Sanborn, Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ramsey Lewis, Patti Austin, and Ann Hampton Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Patti Austin have all recorded albums in tribute to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album ''To Ella with Love'' (1996) features fourteen jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the album also features the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Bridgewater's album ''Dear Ella'' (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Fitzgerald during her career, including the pianist Lou Levy, the trumpeter Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, the double bassist Ray Brown. Bridgewater's following album, ''Live at Yoshi's'', was recorded live on April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st birthday. Patti Austin's album, ''For Ella'' (2002) features 11 songs most immediately associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated for a Grammy. In 2007 ''We All Love Ella'', was released, a tribute album recorded for the 90th anniversary of Fitzgerald's birth. It featured artists such as Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Ledisi, Dianne Reeves, Linda Ronstadt, and Lizz Wright, collating songs most readily associated with the "First Lady of Song".

The folk singer Odetta's album ''To Ella'' (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Fitzgerald's long serving accompanist Tommy Flanagan affectionately remembered Fitzgerald on his album ''Lady be Good...For Ella'' (1994).

Fitzgerald is also referred to on the 1987 song "Ella, elle l'a" by French singer France Gall and the Belgian singer Kate Ryan, the 1976 Stevie Wonder hit "Sir Duke" from his album ''Songs in the Key of Life'', and the song "I Love Being Here With You", written by Peggy Lee and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording of "Mack the Knife" from his album ''L.A. Is My Lady'' (1984) includes a homage to some of the song's previous performers, including 'Lady Ella' herself. She is also honored in the song "First Lady" by Canadian artist Nikki Yanofsky.

In 2008, the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News named its brand new 276-seat theater the Ella Fitzgerald Theater. The theater is located several blocks away from her birthplace on Marshall Avenue. The Grand Opening performers (October 11 & 12, 2008) were Roberta Flack and Queen Esther Marrow.

USPS stamp and Yonkers statue

There is a statue of Fitzgerald in Yonkers, the city in which she grew up. It is located southeast of the main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station. On January 10, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own 39-cent postage stamp. The stamp was released in April 2007 as part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.

Filmography

! Year	! Film	! Role	! Notes and awards
	''Ride 'Em Cowboy''	Ruby
		Maggie Jackson
		Singer
	''Let No Man Write My Epitaph''	Flora

References

Further reading

Nicholson, Stuart. (1996) ''Ella Fitzgerald''. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-40032-3

Gourse, Leslie. (1998) ''The Ella Fitzgerald Companion: Seven Decades of Commentary''. Music Sales Ltd. ISBN 0-02-864625-8

Johnson, J. Wilfred. (2001) ''Ella Fitzgerald: A Complete Annotated Discography''. McFarland & Co Inc. ISBN 0-7864-0906-1

External links

The official website of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

Ella Fitzgerald Complete Discography

Ella Fitzgerald: Twelve Essential Performances by Stuart Nicholson (Jazz.com).

Ella Fitzgerald at the Library of Congress

Official Web Site of Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald, The Official Ed Sullivan Show Website

Redsugar's Ella page

'Remembering Ella' by Phillip D. Atteberry

Todd's Ella Fitzgerald Lyrics Page

Ella Swings Gently - The Ella Fitzgerald Pages

Ella Fitzgerald Tribute CD Video Footage

New York Times article on Ella's early years

Listen to Big Band Serenade podcast, episode 6 Includes complete NBC remote broadcast of "Ella Fitzgerald & her Orchestra" from the Roseland Ballroom (or download)

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