Ella Fitzgerald

**Ella Jane Fitzgerald ** (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), was an American jazz singer. She was called "Lady Ella", the "Queen of Jazz", and the "First Lady of Song".

Her voice spanned three octaves. She could sing very high notes and very low notes. She was famous for her scat singing. She won 14 Grammy Awards.  She was awarded the National Medal of Art and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

## Early life
Ella Fitzgerald was born in 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, United States to William Ashland Fitzgerald and Temperance Fitzgerald. Soon after Ella was born, her parents separated. She went to live in Yonkers, New York with her mother and her mother's boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. In 1923, Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born. When she was a child, Fitzgerald lived in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx.

As a youngster, Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer. She loved listening to jazz music by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She especially liked 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."

In 1932, Fitzgerald's mother died. She got into trouble with the police, and was sent to a reform school. She escaped from the reformatory, and for a time was homeless.

Fitzgerald had her first job as a singer when she was 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Harlem Opera House in Harlem, New York.  She was able to compete in one of its famous "Amateur Nights". At first she was going to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by some local dancers, she decided to sing instead. She won the first prize of US$25 singing Connee Boswell's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection".

## Big-band singing
 in 1940]]
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met a drummer and bandleader called Chick Webb here. Webb had already hired a singer called Charlie Linton to work with the band. According to *The New York Times*, Webb was "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a *diamond in the rough.*"

## Awards
By the 1990s, Fitzgerald had recorded more than 200 songs. In 1991, she gave her final concert at Carnegie Hall. She had performed there 26 times. She received numerous awards. In 1979, she received Kennedy Center Honors. In 1987, she received the National Medal of Arts. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. France presented her with the Commander of Arts and Letters award. Yale University, Dartmouth, and other schools awarded her honorary doctorates. Several of Fitzgerald's awards, significant personal possessions, and documents were given to the Smithsonian Institution, the library of Boston University, the Library of Congress, and the Schoenberg Library at UCLA.

## Personal life
In 1941, Fitzgerald married Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer. The marriage was annulled after two years. In December 1947, she married double bass player Ray Brown. They adopted a child of Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances. They named him Ray Brown, Jr.. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953.

In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. The affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman.

## References