Who would dispute that George and Ira Gershwin, Ella Fitzgerald and Nelson Riddle were pop-jazz Olympians whose combined talents on the 1959 album ''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book'' resulted in a masterpiece of the LP era? Any notion of recreating that album, or even part of it, in concert is a daunting challenge. The...
THE LAST SULTAN The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun By Robert Greenfield Illustrated. 431 pp. Simon & Schuster. $30 Ahmet Ertegun was the first person to ask Ella Fitzgerald for her autograph, in 1935. He lived long enough to party for days on end with Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson, and died in 2006, after falling backstage at a Rolling Stones show...
If ''Ella,'' the Long Wharf Theater's first production of the season, has a message about Ella Fitzgerald, it is that she was terribly unattractive and a horrible mother. Whether true or not, these attributes are treated as givens in this show. So maybe the producers should have a makeup artist drab down their star, Tina Fabrique, or recast the...
Ella Fitzgerald (25. april 1917 - 15. juni 1996) var en af jazzens betydeligste sangerinder, og vinder af 13 grammy-priser, mere end nogen anden musiker.
Hun blev født i Newport News, Virginia og opfostret i Yonkers, New York. Hun voksede op hos sin fraskilte mor, der arbejdede på et vaskeri, mens hun selv løb ærinder for lokale gamblere. Hendes mor døde, da Fitzgerald var femten. Fortvivlet pjækkede hun fra skole og kom på kant med loven. Myndighederne sendte hende til en forbedringsanstalt, hvor hun oplevede mishandling.