Sweet and soaring...Ella Fitzgerald

[KiwiCoromandel]

Ella Fitzgerald is warmly remembered for her infectious girlishness.

"THE ONLY THING better than singing is more singing," Ella Fitzgerald said. Especially if it is her voice floating over the beat but also pushing it, as she swings through Manhattan, stomps at the Savoy, takes a chance on love and soars through springtime in Paris, autumn in New York.

She died a decade ago this week, but Fitzgerald's joie de vivre lives on, her voice still soothing daydreamers. She recorded more than 2000 songs, sold more than 40 million records and won 13 Grammys in a career of 60 years.

"The quality of her voice was the quality of her heart," says her adopted son, the singer Ray Brown jnr, who lives in Hawaii. "She absolutely loved what she did."

Next year, when she would have turned 90, the US Postal Service plans to issue an Ella Fitzgerald stamp, while the Verve label will issue more Fitzgerald compilations. To mark the 10th anniversary of her death, a musical based on her life is to open in nine cities across the United States during this year and next. Ella is set in Nice in 1966, at the time her half-sister, Frances, died.

Frances's biological son is Ray Brown jnr. Ella and her second husband, the bassist, Ray Brown snr, adopted him when he was two or three. Why?

"I guess my biological mother just couldn't meet the responsibility," Ray jnr says. Asked to name Ella's most astonishing performance, he nominates the day "when she got the news that her sister died. She remarked to me ... that she just sang her heart out to her sister."

The sisters were close, united perhaps, by a difficult childhood. Her father left home when Ella was an infant. Her mother died suddenly when she was 15. Her stepfather abused her and, for a time, she was homeless.

Winning a talent quest at Harlem's Apollo Theatre kickstarted her career; soon after, her first big hit, A-Tisket A-Tasket, sold a million copies. Yet her personal life continued on the downward spiral when she married Benny Kornegay, a drug dealer, in 1941. The marriage was anulled and she married Ray Brown in 1947. They divorced after four years. Fitzgerald is then said to have married a Norwegian, Thor Einar Larsen, in Oslo. It was a short-lived romance as he was soon sentenced to five months hard labour in Sweden for stealing money.

Fitzgerald never remarried and had no other children. In her 70s she suffered from diabetes and eye trouble.

source:smh.com.au

[Kooperman]

The best female jazz vocalist ever....her songbook recordings are legendary.

http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/about/music.html

[rainbowdemon]

I was fortunate enough to see Ella live. It's not really my kind of music, but it was a great show just the same!!

:)