Ella Fitzgerald is generally considered to be one of the greatest scat singers in jazz history.^[1]

In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.

Characteristics[link]

Structure and syllable choice[link]

Though scat singing is improvised, the melodic lines are often variations on scale and arpeggio fragments, stock patterns and riffs, as is the case with instrumental improvisers as well as singers. As well, scatting usually incorporates musical structure. All of Ella Fitzgerald's scat performances of "How High the Moon", for instance, use the same tempo, begin with a chorus of a straight reading of the lyric, move to a "specialty chorus" introducing the scat chorus, and then the scat itself.^[2] Will Friedwald has compared Ella Fitzgerald to Chuck Jones directing his Roadrunner cartoon—each uses predetermined formulas in innovative ways.^[2] Among the greatest exponents of the scat style was Mel Tormé, a child prodigy drummer who went on to become one of the most influential jazz performers of the 20th century. Tormé's effortless scatting was built on his outstanding big-band arrangement and multi-instrumentalist skills.

The deliberate choice of scat syllables also is a key element in vocal jazz improvisation. Syllable choice influences the pitch articulation, coloration, and resonance of the performance.^[3] Syllable choice also differentiated jazz singers' personal styles: Betty Carter was inclined to use sounds like "louie-ooie-la-la-la" (soft-tongued sounds or liquids) while Sarah Vaughan would prefer "shoo-doo-shoo-bee-ooo-bee" (fricatives, plosives, and open vowels).^[4] The choice of scat syllables can also be used to reflect the sounds of different instruments. The comparison of the scatting styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan reveals that Fitzgerald’s improvisation mimics the sounds of swing-era big bands with which she performed, while Vaughan’s mimics that of her accompanying bop-era small combos.^[5][a]

Humor[link]

Humor is another important element of many scat performances. Cab Calloway exemplified the use of humorous scatting.^[6] Another classic example of humorous scatting is Slim Gaillard, Leo Watson, and Bam Brown's 1945 "Avocado Seed Soup Symphony", in which they scat variations on the word "avocado" for much of the recording.^[7] In addition to such nonsensical uses of language, humor is communicated in scat singing through the use of musical quotation. Leo Watson, who performed before the canon of American popular music, frequently drew on nursery rhymes in his scatting. This is called using a compression.^[8] Ella Fitzgerald, who performed later, was able to draw extensively on popular music in her singing. For example, in her classic 1960 recording of "How High the Moon" live in Berlin, she quotes over a dozen songs, including "The Peanut Vendor", "Heat Wave", "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".^[9]

Technical difficulty[link]

In the opinion of Jeff Pressing, a psychologist who has studied improvisation extensively, vocal improvisers lack the benefit of "feedback redundancy" that instrumental improvisers have.^[10] All improvisers use feedback from their playing in order to judge what to play next; the more feedback that exists, the easier the improviser's task is. For the instrumentalist, aural, visual, proprioceptive (i.e. body awareness), and touch feedback work in tandem. For the vocalist, however, only aural and proprioceptive feedback are available. Pressing uses this discrepancy to account for violin improvisation being more difficult than sax improvisation, and vocal improvisation more difficult still: "For every first-rate scat-singer in the world", he writes, "there must be 500 talented jazz saxophonists".^[10]

History[link]

	"That Haunting Melody" excerpt Al Jolson's scatting during his 1911 recording of "That Haunting Melody" has been cited as one of the earliest examples of scat singing. — 322 KB
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Origins[link]

	"Heebie Jeebies" excerpt noicon Louis Armstrong's recording of "Heebie Jeebies" was the most influential early example of scat singing. — 168 KB
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Though Louis Armstrong's 1926 recording of Heebie Jeebies is often cited as the first song to employ scatting, there are many earlier examples.^[11] One early master of ragtime scat singing was Gene Greene who recorded scat choruses in his song "King of the Bungaloos" and several others between 1911 and 1917. Entertainer Al Jolson even scatted through a few bars in the middle of his 1911 recording of "That Haunting Melody". Gene Green’s 1917 "From Here to Shanghai", which featured faux-Chinese scatting, and Gene Rodemich's 1924 "Scissor Grinder Joe" and "Some of These Days" also pre-date Armstrong.^[11] Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards scatted an interlude on his 1923 "Old Fashioned Love" in lieu of using an instrumental soloist.^[11][12] Harry Barris, one of Paul Whiteman's "The Rhythm Boys," along with Bing Crosby, scatted on several songs, including "Mississippi Mud," which Barris wrote in 1927. One of the early female singers to use scat was Aileen Stanley who included it at the end of a duet with Billy Murray in their hit 1924 recording of "It Had To Be You"(Victor 19373).

Jelly Roll Morton credited Joe Sims of Vicksburg, Mississippi as the creator of scat around the turn of the 20th century.^[13] Here is a transcription of a conversation between Alan Lomax and Jelly Roll Morton where Morton explains the history of scat^[14]:

Lomax: Well, what about some more scat songs, that you used to sing way back then?
Morton: Oh, I'll sing you some scat songs. That was way before Louis Armstrong's time. By the way, scat is something that a lot of people don't understand, and they begin to believe that the first scat numbers was ever done, was done by one of my hometown boys, Louie Armstrong. But I must take the credit away, since I know better. The first man that ever did a scat number in history of this country was a man from Vicksburg, Mississippi, by the name of Joe Sims, an old comedian. And from that, Tony Jackson and myself, and several more grabbed it in New Orleans. And found it was pretty good for an introduction of a song.
Lomax: What does scat mean?
Morton: Scat doesn't mean anything but just something to give a song a flavor. For an instance we'll say: [launches into an example scat song, accompanying himself on the piano]

Morton also once boasted, "Tony Jackson and myself were using scat for novelty back in 1906 and 1907 when Louis Armstrong was still in the orphan’s home".^[11] Don Redman and Fletcher Henderson also featured scat vocals in their recording of "My Papa Doesn’t Two-Time No Time" five months prior to Armstrong’s 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies".^[11]

It was Armstrong's 1926 performance, however, that was the turning point for the medium.^[15] According to Armstrong, when he was recording the song "Heebie Jeebies", soon to be a national bestseller, with his band The Hot Five, his music fell to the ground. Not knowing the lyrics to the song, he invented a gibberish melody to fill time, expecting the cut to be thrown out in the end, but that take of the song was the one released.^[11] The story is widely believed to be apocryphal,^[16] but the influence of the recording was nonetheless enormous.

Louis Armstrong served as a model for Cab Calloway, whose 1930s scat solos inspired Gershwin's use of the medium in his Porgy and Bess;^[17] it was from the 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" arose the techniques that would form the foundation of modern scat.^[15]

Later development[link]

On October 26, 1927 Duke Ellington's Orchestra recorded "Creole Love Call" featuring Adelaide Hall singing wordlessly. "She sounds like a particularly sensitive growl trumpeter", according to Nat Hentoff. The creativity must be shared between Ellington and Hall as he knew the style of performance he wanted, but she was the one who was able to produce the sound. In 1932, Ellington repeated the experiment in one of his versions of "The Mooche", with Baby Cox singing scat after a muted similar trombone solo by Tricky Sam Nanton.

Bands such as The Boswell Sisters regularly employed scatting on their records, including the high complexity of scatting at the same time, in harmony. An excellent example would be their version of "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)". Another famous scat singer is Scatman Crothers who would go on to movie and television fame. British dance band trumpeter and vocalist Nat Gonella was a notable scat singer. Some authorities considered scat singing as lacking respectability, including BBC Radio which did not permit scatting on air in the late 1930s.

Over the years, as jazz music developed and grew in complexity, scat singing did as well. During the bop era, more highly-developed vocal improvisation surged in popularity.^[17] Annie Ross, a bop singer, expressed a common sentiment among vocalists at the time: "The [scat] music was so exciting, everyone wanted to do it."^[18] And just about everyone did: Ella Fitzgerald, Eddie Jefferson, Betty Carter, Anita O’Day, Joe Carroll, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Jon Hendricks, Babs Gonzales, and Dizzy Gillespie all were important singers in the idiom.^[17] Fitzgerald once hailed herself as the “best vocal improviser jazz has ever had”, and critics since then have been in almost universal agreement with her.^[1]

In the 1960s, traditional scatting gave way to the free-jazz movement, which allowed scat singers to include sounds in their repertoire that had before been considered non-musical, such as screams, cries, and laughter. Free jazz and the influence of world musicians on the medium pushed jazz singing nearer to avant-garde art music.^[17] In the 60s Ward Swingle was the product of an unusually liberal musical education. He took the scat singing idea and applied it to the works of Bach, creating The Swingle Singers. Scat singing is also featured by Louis Prima and others in the song "I Wan'na Be Like You" in Disney's The Jungle Book (1967).

The bop revival of the 1970s renewed interest in bop scat singing, and young scat singers viewed themselves as a continuation of the classic bop tradition. The medium continues to evolve, and vocal improvisation now often develops independently of changes in instrumental jazz.^[17]

Jazz artist John Paul Larkin (better known as Scatman John) renewed interest in the genre briefly during the mid-1990s when he began fusing Jazz singing with pop music and electronica, scoring a world-wide hit with the song Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop) in 1994. This has continued to a degree in recent years, due to the continued popularity of Scatman John, and segments in the British television comedy series The Mighty Boosh which featured scat singing (referred to by its performers as "crimping").

Vocal improviser Bobby McFerrin’s recent performances have shown that “wordless singing has traveled far from the concepts demonstrated by Louis Armstrong, Gladys Bentley, Cab Calloway, Anita O’Day, and Leo Watson.”^[19]

Use in hip-hop[link]

Many hip-hop music artists and rappers use scat singing to come up with the rhythms of their raps.^[20] Tajai of the group Souls of Mischief states the following in the book How to Rap: “Sometimes my rhythms come from scatting. I usually make a scat kind of skeleton and then fill in the words. I make a skeleton of the flow first, and then I put words into it.”.^[20] The group Lifesavas describe a similar process.^[20] Rapper Tech N9ne has been recorded demonstrating exactly how this method works, in an audio segment covered by The Washington Post.^[21] Godfather of gangsta rap Eazy-E uses it extensively in his song Eazy Street.

Music historical explanations[link]

Paul Berliner has suggested that scat singing arose from instrumental soloists like Louis Armstrong (pictured) formulating jazz riffs vocally.^[22]

Some writers have proposed that scat has its roots in African musical traditions.^[17] In much African music, "human voice and instruments assume a kind of musical parity" and are "at times so close in timbre and so inextricably interwoven within the music’s fabric as to be nearly indistinguishable".^[23] Dick Higgins likewise attributes scat singing to traditions of sound poetry in African-American music.^[24] In West African music, it is typical to convert drum rhythms into vocal melodies; common rhythmic patterns are assigned specific syllabic translations.^[17] However, this theory fails to account for the existence—even in the earliest recorded examples of scatting—of free improvisation by the vocalist.^[17] It is therefore more likely that scat singing evolved independently in the United States.^[17]

Others have proposed that scat singing arose from jazz musicians' practice of formulating riffs vocally before performing them instrumentally.^[22] (The adage "If you can’t sing it, you can’t play it" was common in the early New Orleans jazz scene.^[22]) In this manner, soloists like Louis Armstrong became able to double as vocalists, switching effortlessly between instrumental solos and scatting.^[22]

Critical assessment[link]

Scat singing can allow jazz singers to have the same improvisational opportunities as jazz instrumentalists: scatting can be rhythmically and harmonically improvisational without concern about destroying the lyric.^[25] Especially when bebop was developing, singers found scat to be the best way to adequately engage in the performance of jazz.^[18]

Scatting may be desirable because it does not "taint the music with the impurity of denotation".^[26] Instead of conveying linguistic content and pointing to something outside itself, scat music—like instrumental music—is self-referential and "d[oes] what it mean[s]".^[27] Through this wordlessness, commentators have written, scat singing can describe matters beyond words.^[26][28] Music critic Will Friedwald has written that Louis Armstrong's scatting, for example, "has tapped into his own core of emotion", releasing emotions "so deep, so real" that they are unspeakable; his words "bypass our ears and our brains and go directly for our hearts and souls".^[28]

Various psychological and metaphysical theorists have instead proposed that vocal improvisation allows for revelations from the soul’s depths.^[29] Musician and lecturer Roberto Laneri has proposed a theory of improvisation based on "different states of consciousness" that draws on the Jungian model of the collective unconscious.^[29] The music stemming from Laneri’s improvisatory "consciousness expansion" tends to be vocal, as the voice is regarded as the "primal instrument".^[29]

Scat singing has never been universally accepted, even by jazz enthusiasts. Writer and critic Leonard Feather offers an extreme view: he once said that "scat singing—with only a couple exceptions—should be banned".^[18] Many of the finest jazz singers, including Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Dinah Washington, have avoided scat entirely.^[30]

Notes[link]

See also[link]

• A cappella
• Beatboxing
• Blues scale
• Dada
• Free improvisation
• Free jazz
• Glossolalia
• Jam session
• Lilting
• List of scat singers
• Non-lexical vocables in music
• Overtone singing
• Pentatonic scale
• Puirt a beul
• Vocalese (jazz vocal improvisation using lyrics instead of nonsense syllables)

References[link]

Works cited[link]

• Berliner, Paul (1994), Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-04381-4 .
• Crowther, Bruce; Pinfold, Mike (1997), Singing Jazz, London: Miller Freeman Books, ISBN 0-87930-519-3 .
• Edwards, Brent Hayes (2002), "Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat", Critical Inquiry 28 (3): 618–649, DOI:10.1086/343233, ISSN 0093-1896 . Brief excerpt available online.
• Friedwald, Will (1990), Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, ISBN 0-684-18522-9 .
• Giddins, Gary (2000), Rhythm-A-Ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80987-7 .
• Grant, Barry Keith (1995), "Purple Passages or Fiestas in Blue? Notes Toward an Aesthetic of Vocalese", in Gabbard, Krin, Representing Jazz, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, ISBN 978-0-8223-1594-0 .
• Higgins, Dick (1985), "A Taxonomy of Sound Poetry", in Kostelanetz, Richard; Scobie, Stephen, Precisely Complete, Archae Editions, ISBN 0-932360-63-7, http://www.ubu.com/papers/higgins_sound.html .
• Hill, Michael, Library of Congress Narrative. Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax, http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/locspeech2.html .
• Leonard, Neil (Spring-Summer 1986), "The Jazzman’s Verbal Usage", Black American Literature Forum (Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 20, No. 1/2) 20 (1/2): 151–159, DOI:10.2307/2904558, ISSN 0148-6179, JSTOR 2904558 .
• Nicholson, Stuart (1993), Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80642-8, http://books.google.com/?id=oBXd2_-6_GoC .
• Pressing, Jeff (1988), "Improvisation: Methods and Models", in Sloboda, John, Generative Processes in Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 978-0-19-850846-5 .
• Robinson, J. Bradford, "Scat Singing", in Macy, L., New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?from=az&section=music.24717 . Accessed October 30, 2007.
• Stewart, Milton L. (1987), "Stylistic Environment and the Scat Singing Styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan", Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 19: 61–76, ISSN 0075-3572 .

External links[link]

Video Examples:

• Ella Fitzgerald & Sammy Davis, Jr., "S'Wonderful"
• Billy Stewart Sitting In The Park
• Sarah Vaughan & Wynton Marsalis, "Autumn Leaves"
• The Rhythm Boys (Harry Barris scatting, Bing Crosby et al), "The Mississippi Mud" written by Barris

Ella Fitzgerald
photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1940
Background information
Birth name	Ella Jane Fitzgerald
Also known as	First Lady of Song, Lady Ella
Born	(1917-04-25)April 25, 1917 Newport News, Virginia
Died	June 15, 1996(1996-06-15) (aged 79) Beverly Hills, California
Genres	Swing, traditional pop, vocal jazz
Occupations	Vocalist
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1934-1993
Labels	Capitol, Decca, Pablo, Reprise, Verve
Website	Official website

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella", was an American jazz and song vocalist.^[1] With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook.^[2] 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[link]

Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald.^[3] The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday School.^[4][5]

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."^[6]

In 1932, her mother died from a heart attack.^[3] 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 ^[7] and at one point worked as a lookout at a bordello and also with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner.^[8] When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx.^[9] 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.^[7]

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.^[10]

Later life[link]

Ella Fitzgerald photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1940.

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.^[6]

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.^[3]

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."^[3] 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."^[10]

Already visually impaired by the effects of diabetes, Fitzgerald had both her legs amputated in 1993.^[3] 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.^[11] 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[link]

Big-band singing[link]

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 there. 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."^[6] 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 and her Famous Orchestra" with Ella taking on the role of nominal bandleader. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 sides with the orchestra before it broke up in 1942, "the majority of them novelties and disposable pop fluff".^[6]

Decca years[link]

Ella in 1947

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 this in was 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."^[10]

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."^[6] Her bebop recording of "Oh, Lady be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.^{[citation needed]}

Move to Verve and mainstream success[link]

Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's JATP concerts by 1955. She 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."^[6]

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. Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience.

Ella Fitzgerald in 1968. Photo courtesy of the Fraser MacPherson estate

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."^[6]

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."^[8] 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.

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.^[6]

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[link]

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.^[12]

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.^[13] 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 C flat and possibly higher”.^[13]

Later years[link]

Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1963 for $3 million and in 1967 MGM failed to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Over the next five years she flitted between Atlantic, Capitol and Reprise. Her material at this time represented a departure from her typical jazz repertoire. For Capitol she recorded Brighten the Corner, an album of hymns, Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas, an album of traditional Christmas carols, Misty Blue, a country and western-influenced album, and 30 by Ella, a series of six medleys that fulfilled her obligations for the label. During this period, she had her last US chart single with a cover of Smokey Robinson's "Get Ready", previously a hit for The Temptations, and some months later a top-five hit for Rare Earth.

The surprise success of the 1972 album Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72 led Granz to found Pablo Records, his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums for the label. Ella in London recorded live in 1974 with pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Keter Betts and drummer Bobby Durham, was considered by many to be some of her best work. The following year she again performed with Joe Pass on German television station NDR in Hamburg. Her years with Pablo Records also documented the decline in her voice. "She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and her voice was harder, with a wider vibrato", one biographer wrote.^[3] Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993.^[14]

Film and television[link]

Fitzgerald shakes hands with President Ronald Reagan after performing in the White House, 1981

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."^[3] 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."^[15] 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 made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on The Frank Sinatra Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and alongside other greats 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. A performance at "Ronnie Scott's" jazz club in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. 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. ^[16]

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!"^[17] Her final commercial campaign was for American Express, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

Discography[link]

Collaborations[link]

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.^[3] 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[link]

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.^[18] Across town at the University of Southern California, she received the coveted^{[citation needed]} USC "Magnum Opus" Award which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.

Philanthropies[link]

Fitzgerald was a quiet but ardent supporter of many charities and non-profit organizations, including the American Heart Association and the City of Hope Medical Center. In 1993, she established the "Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation", which continues to fund programs that perpetuate Ella's ideals. The Foundation's mission and goals, as well as many of the organizations that receive support, can be found at the official Ella Fitzgerald Foundation website Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. The Foundation also runs a Children's Book Program in memory of Miss Fitzgerald; called "A Book Just For Me!", it provides over 100,000 brand-new books each year to disadvantaged children.

Tributes and legacy[link]

Fitzgerald in 1960 by Erling Mandelmann.

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

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, 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.

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". Folk singer Odetta's album To Ella (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Her 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[link]

There is a bronze sculpture of Fitzgerald in Yonkers,created by American artist Vinnie Bagwell, the city in which she grew up. It is located southeast of the main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station. A bust of Fitzgerald is on the campus of Chapman College in Orange, California. 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.^[19]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• 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[link]

	Biography portal
	Music portal

	Book: Ella Fitzgerald
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ella Fitzgerald

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ella Fitzgerald

• Ella Fitzgerald at the Internet Movie Database
• Ella Fitzgerald at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ella Fitzgerald at Find a Grave
• Ella Fitzgerald Complete Discography
• Ella Fitzgerald: Twelve Essential Performances by Stuart Nicholson (Jazz.com).
• Ella Fitzgerald at the Library of Congress
• 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)

Cab Calloway
Photographed by William Gottlieb, 1947
Background information
Birth name	Cabell Calloway III
Born	(1907-12-25)December 25, 1907 Rochester, New York, US
Died	November 18, 1994(1994-11-18) (aged 86) Hockessin, Delaware, US
Genres	Jazz, blues
Occupations	Bandleader, singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1930–1994
Associated acts	The Cab Calloway Orchestra
Website	www.cabcalloway.com

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer.

Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s. Calloway's band featured performers including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Cab Calloway was born in a middle-class family in Rochester, New York, on Christmas Day in 1907. He lived there until moving to Baltimore, Maryland in 1918. His father, Cabell Calloway II, was a lawyer and his mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a teacher and church organist. When Cab was young, he enjoyed singing in church.^[1] His parents recognized their son's musical talent and he began private voice lessons in 1922. He continued to study music and voice throughout his formal schooling. Despite his parents' and vocal teachers' disapproval of jazz, Calloway began frequenting and eventually performing in many of Baltimore's jazz clubs, where he was mentored by drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones.

After graduating from Frederick Douglass High School Calloway joined his older sister, Blanche, in a touring production of the popular black musical revue Plantation Days. (Blanche Calloway herself would become an accomplished bandleader before her brother, and he would often credit her as his inspiration for entering show business.) Calloway attended Lincoln University (a historically black university) in Pennsylvania, but left in 1930 without graduating.

When the tour ended in Chicago in the fall, Calloway decided to remain in Chicago with his sister, who had an established career as a jazz singer in that city. His parents had hopes of their son becoming a lawyer like his father, so Calloway enrolled in Crane College. His main interest, however, was in singing and entertaining, and he spent most of his nights at the Dreamland Ballroom, the Sunset Cafe, and the Club Berlin, performing as a drummer, singer and MC.

At the Sunset Cafe he met and performed with Louis Armstrong who taught him to sing in the "scat" style.

Success[link]

The Cotton Club was the premier jazz venue in the country, and Calloway and his orchestra (he had taken over a brilliant but failing band called "The Missourians" in 1930) were hired as a replacement for the Duke Ellington Orchestra while they were touring. Calloway quickly proved so popular that his band became the "co-house" band with Ellington's, and his group began touring nationwide when not playing the Cotton Club. Their popularity was greatly enhanced by the twice-weekly live national radio broadcasts on NBC at the Cotton Club. Calloway also appeared on Walter Winchell's radio program and with Bing Crosby in his show at New York's Paramount Theatre. As a result of these appearances, Calloway, together with Ellington, broke the major broadcast network color barrier.^{[citation needed]}

Like other bands fronted by a singing bandleader, Calloway initially gave ample soloist space to its lead members and, through the varied arrangements of Walter 'Foots' Thomas, provided much more in the way of musical interest. Many of his records were "vocal specialities" with Calloway's vocal taking up the majority of the record.

In 1931 he recorded his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher". That song, along with "St. James Infirmary Blues" and "The Old Man Of The Mountain," were performed for the Betty Boop animated shorts Minnie the Moocher, Snow White and The Old Man of the Mountain, respectively. Through rotoscoping, Calloway not only gave his voice to these cartoons, but his dance steps as well. He took advantage of this and timed his concerts in some communities with the release of the films in order to make the most of the attention. As a result of the success of "Minnie the Moocher," he became identified with its chorus, gaining the nickname "The Hi De Ho Man". He also performed in a series of short films for Paramount in the 1930s. (Calloway and Ellington were featured on film more than any other jazz orchestras of the era.) In these films, Calloway can be seen performing a gliding backstep dance move, the precursor to Michael Jackson's "moonwalk"—Calloway said fifty years later, "it was called The Buzz back then."^[2] The 1933 film, International House featured Calloway performing his classic song, "Reefer Man," a tune about a man who favors marijuana cigarettes.^[3]

Calloway made his "first proper Hollywood movie appearance" opposite Al Jolson in The Singing Kid in 1936. He sang a number of duets with Jolson, and the film included Calloway's band and cast of twenty-two Cotton Club dancers from New York.^[4] According to music historian Arthur Knight, the film aimed in part "to both erase and celebrate boundaries and differences, including most emphatically the color line." He also notes that "when Calloway begins singing in his characteristic style – in which the words are tools for exploring rhythm and stretching melody – it becomes clear that American culture is changing around Jolson and with (and through) Calloway. . ."^[5][6]:watch

Calloway's was one of the most popular American jazz bands of the 1930s, recording prolifically for Brunswick and the ARC dime store labels (Banner, Cameo, Conqueror, Perfect, Melotone, Banner, Oriole, etc.) from 1930–1932, when he signed with Victor for a year. He was back on Brunswick in late 1934 through 1936, when he signed with manager Irving Mills's short-lived Variety in 1937, and stayed with Mills when the label collapsed and the sessions were continued on Vocalion through 1939, and then OKeh through 1942. After the recording ban due to the 1942-44 musicians' strike ended, he continued to record prolifically.

Calloway's vocal style is a blend of hot scat singing and improvisation coupled with a very traditional vaudeville-like singing style. Many of his ballads are devoid of tone bending jazz styling.

In 1941 Calloway fired Dizzy Gillespie from his orchestra after an onstage fracas erupted when Calloway was hit with spitballs. He wrongly accused Gillespie, who stabbed Calloway in the leg with a small knife.^[7]

In 1943 Calloway appeared in the high-profile 20th Century Fox musical film, Stormy Weather.

In 1944 The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive was published, an update of an earlier book in which Calloway set about translating jive for fans who might not know, for example, that "kicking the gong around" was a reference to smoking opium.

Calloway and his band starred in "Hi De Ho," an all-black full-length film directed by Josh Binney.

In the late 1940's, Calloway wrote a regular humorous pseudo gossip column called "Coastin' With Cab" for Song Hits Magazine. It was a collection of celebrity snippets such as this one, in the May 1946 issue: "Benny Goodman was dining at Ciro's steak house in New York when a very homely girl entered. 'If her face is her fortune,' Benny quipped, 'she'd be tax-free'."

Later years[link]

In the 1950s Calloway moved his family from Long Island, New York to Greenburgh, New York, to raise the three youngest of his five daughters.

In his later career Calloway appeared in a number of films and stage productions that utilized both his acting and singing talents. In 1952 he played the prominent role of "Sportin' Life" in a production of the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess with William Warfield and Leontyne Price as the title characters. Another notable role was "Yeller" in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), with Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret and Edward G. Robinson.