Oh, the shot has Burley Seaheer And he shows them Burley White When she sang it, that's the way it should be sung You knew when you heard a singtay was she was the best And she proved to be the best, she was the queen of swing She is one of those singers who could sing the phone book And it's very enviable I'd love a voice like that Ella Fitzgerald The gorky-looking, shy teenager in Harlem who became one of the most popular singers of the 20th century In a career that lasted over 50 years Ella sold more than 40 million albums and was awarded 13 Grammys That's what jazz is, you can sing one note in so many ways And she's found the ways to do it Ella appeals to people who aren't necessarily into jazz She's easy to get into but once you start to delve underneath the surface There's no one that has the entire package the way she does the technique It was just one of those things Ella's groundbreaking series of song book albums during the 1950s shattered the barriers of what a black female artist could achieve But privately, Ella was not always the exuberant figure who appeared on stage Her troubled childhood was kept from the public, unknown until recently The public never knew the full measure of what she'd overcome in order to become the great singer, the great icon that she became But with her extraordinary untrained talent, Ella communicated the sheer joy of singing like no one else It don't mean a thing, even a-got that's right It don't need a thing, all you gotta do is scream That's sweet Thank you! Thank you! Life has a crazy pattern and fortune comes to few Ella Fitzgerald was born in Virginia in 1917 Her father William was a wagon driver, her mother Tempea-Alondress My mother had a very beautiful classical voice They tell me that my father was a guitar player But I don't know, because I never met him Her father died when she was just a year old With her mother Tempea, Ella joined the great migration of poor black families seeking a better life in the North I was a kid about half past three, my mom said, daughter, come here do me Ella arrived in the New York suburb of Yonkers She soon found herself with a stepfather and half-sister Ella was not a conventionally attractive girl, and she was something of a tomboy, but very bright You've learned your ABCs, you've learned your- When I was going to school, I took an academic course and I felt that I wanted to be a doctor But I knew I really gave it that much thought And then I started wanting to do something else I used to dance, I was known as one of their great little tap dancers But I've always been sort of a shy person The young Ella loved to listen to the radio Among her favourites were popular 20th-striro, the Boswell sisters Three nice middle class ladies, you know But they made music that swung really hard And Connie Boswell, the lead singer of the Boswell sisters, was Ella Fitzgerald's hero Music goes round and around, hold you up Low and it goes out They gave her a feeling of music being optimistic and kind of sounding easier than it was to do And that sort of grace that was always a feature of her own work