BECOMING ELLA FITZGERALD
The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
by Judith Tick
Comprehensive and fascinating biography of an American music titan.
Music historian Tick, author of Ruth Crawford Seeger, presents the first extensive biography of Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) since her death. The author makes excellent use of newly available resources, in particular the digital records of Black newspapers such as the Baltimore Afro-American, “the most widely circulated Black newspaper on the East Coast,” and the Chicago Defender, unavailable to previous Fitzgerald biographers. Tick expertly synthesizes those sources to provide tremendous insight into Fitzgerald's early and personal life, the jazz and pop worlds in which she thrived and expanded her audience, and her groundbreaking work as a Black American woman singer and bandleader. The author’s music-history chops are on full display in her consistently intriguing analyses of how and why particular songs and lyrics ("The Object of My Affection," "Goodnight My Love," and "Mack the Knife" for example) worked for Fitzgerald musically and culturally; her significance in the world of bebop; early performances in such venues as the Apollo Theater and the Savoy Ballroom; and her radio, stage, and recording career with bandleaders like Chick Webb. Tick excels at describing the stark contrast between Fitzgerald's onstage presence and her offstage shyness; passages on Fitzgerald's relationship with the Decca and Verve labels and her collaborations with arrangers such as Nelson Riddle are equally valuable. The author also covers prominent music journalists' reviews of and debates about Fitzgerald's work and status, her lasting imprint on the Great American Songbook, and her evolution to adapt to a changing American music scene. “Through her own transformative quests as an artist,” writes Tick, “she changed the trajectory of American vocal jazz in this century.” Essential for casual fans of jazz and music history and Fitzgerald aficionados alike, this thoroughly impressive work will be hard to equal.
As masterful and wonderful as its subject.