Legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald gained a devout audience for over six decades, earning
the nickname "The First Lady of Song."
But her troubled past isn't usually mentioned in tributes and remembrances of her career.
This is the tragic real-life story of Ella Fitzgerald.
Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, on April 25, 1917, to her mother,
Temperance Fitzgerald.
Her father left the picture when Ella was two and a half.
Temperance struggled to make ends meet and moved north to Yonkers, New York, with her
daughter and new boyfriend, Joseph.
There, young Ella thrived in school, taking an interest in the church choir and dance
and falling in love with the jazz records her mother brought home.
She learned to imitate her favorite singers and would take trips to the city to check
out the latest steps at dance halls.
That determined young girl would be waylaid by grief.
In 1932, Temperance died in a car accident, leaving 15-year-old Fitzgerald an orphan during
the height of the Great Depression.
After Temperance's passing, young Ella's stepfather allegedly mistreated her.
By 1933, she'd fled to her aunt's in Harlem to escape.
However, according to NPR, Ella's aunt struggled to support her.
Fitzgerald entered a dark period.
She skipped school, and she took up work as a lookout at a bordello and as a courier for
a numbers runner.
With her truancy and ties with criminal work, Fitzgerald was sent to the overcrowded Colored
Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, according to The New York Times.
She was later moved to the New York Training School for Girls, a state reformatory school
in Albany notorious for its squalid conditions.
In fact, Fitzgerald was said to have been held in the basement of one of the cottages,
where she was allegedly beaten and served only bread and water.
After running away from the reformatory school, she lived hand-to-mouth and danced for tips
on 125th Street in New York.
According to PBS American Masters, Fitzgerald slept wherever she could, essentially homeless.
Ella Fitzgerald might have concealed her troubled years from the public, but they were deeply
etched into her psyche.
When the New York Training School for Girls invited her to come back as a success story
in the 1960s, she refused.
Fitzgerald's big break came at 17, when she put her name in to perform at the Amateur
Talent Night at the Apollo Theater in 1934.
Fitzgerald had planned to dance, but after watching the reigning dance duo the Edwards
Sisters, she decided to sing.
"I really went on to try to be a dancer, that's how I went on amateur contests.
But when I got on the stage and I saw all these people I lost my nerve."
Fitzgerald wowed the audience with renditions of The Object of My Affection and Judy, and
won first place.
From that exposure, Fitzgerald met bandleader Chick Webb, who was looking for an accompanying
female singer for Charlie Linton.
After a few trial gigs, Webb asked her to join the band for $12.50 a week.
Still a ward of the state, Ella Fitzgerald was paroled to Chick Webb's band.
By 1938, Fitzgerald had brought the big band acclaim when she helped co-write the nursery
theme A-Tisket, A-Tasket.
Sadly, Chick Webb died of tuberculosis in 1939, and Fitzgerald lost her friend and father
figure.
It was her turn to take the lead at just 22.
Renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, the group went on to record 150 songs before disbanding
in 1941.
Despite her undeniable talent, Fletcher Henderson and Chick Webb were initially hesitant to
hire Fitzgerald, with her unkempt hair, eyeglasses, and modest clothing.
When Webb first saw her, he whispered to Charles Linton,
"You're not puttin' that on my bandstand."
Going from living on the streets to working ballrooms within months was quite a transition.
As reported in Geoffrey Mark's biography Ella, Chick Webb's band members had to teach her
grooming and hygiene.
Years without parents meant she didn't know the beauty standards of the 1930s.
But the unflappable Ella Fitzgerald took her bandmates' jabs about her shoes, dresses,
and hair in stride, recalling in the book Words of Wisdom,
"I used to wish I was pretty...My cousin Georgia always taught me that if you smile, people
will like you."
Fitzgerald proved that talent and verve transcended first impressions.
As The New York Times put it,
"Ella Fitzgerald fit no available or desirable cultural type...[People] didn't want to be
her or have her.
And so she turned herself into a force of music."
Fitzgerald had a breakthrough hit by 1938, and brought the melodic ease of scatting and
swing to an audience reeling from the Great Depression.
By 1940, Fitzgerald enjoyed popularity at home and a spark of fame abroad.
Her singular voice proved to be a salve for men and women enduring World War II.
Like her peers, Fitzgerald volunteered her talents with the United Service Organizations,
or USO, bringing her music to the troops.
Fitzgerald experienced heinous racial discrimination during her time volunteering.
Despite championing equality in their policies, many USO shows were segregated: Of 3,000 total
USO clubs, only 109 staffed by white volunteers would admit Black people.
Fitzgerald was restricted to certain cars on public transportation and had limited hotel
options.
On a crowded train near the DC area, Fitzgerald took a seat on a whites-only car after she
was unable to find other seating.
The conductor forced her off, but a group of white sailors insisted that she remain.
Tour legs were full of these incidents, but Fitzgerald, magnanimous as ever, still packed
her schedule.
At the age of 24, she was billed as a "special attraction" at USO benefit shows.
Fitzgerald struggled to progress her sound beyond bebop.
Her catalog, which, by the late 1940s, consisted of standouts like Flying Home and Lady Be
Good, was full of fluffy novelty tunes that were considered below her skill level by critics.
Enter Norman Granz, who invited her to join the Jazz at the Philharmonic series in 1949.
He became her manager, signing her to his label, Verve.
As noted by The New York Times, it was Granz who first suggested that Fitzgerald record
songbooks of major composers, a career-defining pivot.
With the Cole Porter Songbook and the Rodgers & Hart Songbook, she was exposed to the public
as more than a jazz or scat singer.
She would become an interpreter of great composers and expand her work to major concert venues
like Carnegie Hall and take bit parts in films like Pete Kelly's Blues and St. Louis Blues.
Norman Granz was not just a champion of artistic progressiveness, he also lobbied for equal
treatment for his signed performers, per NPR.
Granz wrote it into the contracts of his artists that they wouldn't play segregated halls.
Fitzgerald would later say that meeting Norman Granz was a turning point in her life.
Despite her popularity from novelty songs and singles, Fitzgerald's race and plain appearance
kept her relegated to small jazz clubs and far from major nightclubs.
However, that all changed in 1954, when actress Marilyn Monroe, at the peak of her Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes fame, saw Fitzgerald perform, and the two became fast friends.
The following year, when the nightclub Mocambo in West Hollywood refused to book Fitzgerald
because of her weight and looks, Monroe leveraged her star power.
Per Biography, Monroe cut a deal with Mocambo's owner that she would sit in the front of the
club if, in exchange, he gave Fitzgerald a try.
In March 1955, Fitzgerald headlined the Mocambo for a few weeks, selling the house out and
bringing in stars like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.
A few more times over the course of their friendship, Monroe stepped in to boost Fitzgerald's
signal and advocate for the respect she deserved.
As quoted in Marilyn Monroe: Cover to Cover, Fitzgerald told Ms. Magazine in 1972 that,
"I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt."
In 1941,Fitzgerald married Benjamin Kornegay, a shipyard worker known for petty theft and
drug-dealing.
Encouraged by bandmates and handlers to end the marriage, Fitzgerald got an annulment
a year later.
Reportedly the judge at her annulment told Kornegay to stay away, but told Ella,
"You just keep singing 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket.'"
At age 30, Fitzgerald married bassist Ray Brown.
It was a love affair of musicians with the same passion, it was also a love affair of
conflicting schedules.
The pair adopted the son of Fitzgerald's half-sister and named him Ray Jr.
He was frequently left in the care of Fitzgerald's aunt Virginia due to touring.
Brown and Fitzgerald divorced in 1953, leaving Ella devastated, as reported by The New York
Times.
Meanwhile, Ray Jr. and his mother were distanced.
Fitzgerald admitted that her son largely had to raise himself because she was always on
tour.
"With the amount of travel that she did there were some obviously lonely times."
Healing from her divorce, it was rumored that Fitzgerald had a secret marriage with Norwegian
producer Thor Larsen in 1957.
The romance was cut short when Larsen was arrested for stealing money from a former
fiancée and barred from entering the US.
Never one to openly complain, Ella funneled all that grief into her tunes.
"It wasn't gonna make things different, it wasn't gonna change what was.
So the best she could do was pick up from there and go on."
Championed today as a civil rights pioneer, Ella Fitzgerald experienced plenty of discrimination
in her career.
Fitzgerald said of her early career,
"I worked with the band when we had to travel through the South, and I went through all
those experiences...I feel grateful that I've been able to pay all those dues...That's how
we become greater."
In 1955, Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and a few members of their bands were arrested
in Jim Crow-era Houston for playing dice in their dressing rooms.
Fitzgerald recalled to the Los Angeles Times,
"At the police station, they even had the nerve to ask me for my autograph."
Sometimes, she fought back.
In 1954, Fitzgerald and her entourage were bumped from a Pan American flight, for which
she had a first-class ticket, on the way to the Australian leg of her tour, as reported
by The New York Times.
Stuck in Honolulu and unable to reboard to retrieve their belongings, Fitzgerald was
forced to cancel her first two tour dates.
She filed a lawsuit for $270,000, citing humiliation and pain from racial discrimination.
When interviewed by CBC about the incident, Fitzgerald said she got a nice settlement
and, in the face of discrimination, wouldn't hesitate to sue again.
"Would you do that kind of thing again?"
"What do you mean, sue?"
"Yeah."
"Yes!
Yes if I think a person's wrong."
For such a charismatic performer, Fitzgerald was cripplingly self-conscious and shy.
"Have you ever starred or played a very important part in a motion picture?"
"Yes."
Rarely giving interviews, the First Lady of Song only ever felt at home when she was onstage,
telling CNN,
"I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do.
I think I do better when I sing."
A focal point of Fitzgerald's anxiety was her weight.
Singer Charles Linton recalled how when Fitzgerald saw people staring at her, she assumed it
was about her appearance, not the more likely reason that they were huge fans.
She said,
"I always try to think 'I'm going to be happy.'
I look at myself and say, 'Now, Ella, you could lose that weight and be just like so-and-so.'
Then I'll get real self-conscious."
That lack of ego persisted even as Fitzgerald's fame skyrocketed through the decades.
According to the Los Angeles Times, she was shaking in her boots to perform with Bing
Crosby in the 1940s, and when she met Clint Eastwood, she ended up asking him for an autograph.
Bandmates reported that she always went straight home from live shows.
It was hard for Ella Fitzgerald to keep a social life outside of her grueling 45-weeks-per-year
touring schedule.
In many ways, Fitzgerald regarded her role as the Queen of Jazz more seriously than her
own heath.
With a neck-breaking tour schedule, Fitzgerald began to feel the wear on her body after three
decades on the road.
In the early 1970s, she had a cataract removed and also suffered an eye hemorrhage, as reported
by the Los Angeles Times.
Fitzgerald was in and out of hospitals for respiratory illnesses or exhaustion.
In 1986, she underwent quintuple bypass surgery and rested for a scant nine months before
booking performances again.
She played at least once a month through the early 1990s, according to The New York Times.
One of the motivators for remaining active through decades of weakening health was that
Fitzgerald was addicted to singing and got bored at home.
The other reason was that she simply needed the money.
When her half-sister passed away, Fitzgerald supported her extended family financially,
and that required even more dates.
In 1993, Fitzgerald's legs were amputated below the knees due to complications from
diabetes, and her touring stopped, as told by Encyclopedia Britannica.
In 1996, at age 79, she passed away from a stroke.
Fitzgerald had an incredible 60-year career that won her 14 Grammys, sold over 40 million
records, earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and got her the National Medal
of Arts.
In 2019, it was revealed that her catalog was among the lost material in the 2008 Universal
fire.
So Fitzgerald's estate will be unable to reissue or remaster a large portion of her work.
However, the delightful jazz, pop, and swing Fitzgerald delivered to the world was not
her sole legacy.
Throughout her life, she was intent on bolstering the lives of orphaned children.
She founded the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation in 1993, which aimed to provide
assistance for at-risk youth and develop art programs.
Though Ella Fitzgerald became one of the most successful and highly decorated vocal performers
of a generation, her small beginnings remained a motivation for her work.
With her soft-spoken humility and endless dedication to her craft, Lady Ella never stopped
trying to earn the love of her audience.
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