Early career in January 1940 While Fitzgerald seems to have survived during 1933 and 1934 in part by singing on the streets of
Harlem, she debuted at age 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest
Amateur Nights at the
Apollo Theater. Fitzgerald had intended to go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated by a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead. She won the chance to perform at the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of her disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part of her prize. In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the
Tiny Bradshaw band at the
Harlem Opera House. Although "reluctant to sign her...because she was gawky and unkempt, a 'diamond in the rough,'" Webb died of
spinal tuberculosis on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, with Fitzgerald taking on the role of bandleader. Fitzgerald and the band recorded for
Decca and appeared at the
Roseland Ballroom, where they received national exposure on
NBC radio broadcasts. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 songs with Webb's orchestra between 1935 and 1942. In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight.
Decca years (right) and
Ray Brown (left), in New York City, 1947 In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in the band, Fitzgerald started to work as lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July, her band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia. While working for
Decca Records, Fitzgerald had hits with
Bill Kenny &
the Ink Spots,
Louis Jordan, and
the Delta Rhythm Boys. Producer
Norman Granz became her manager in the mid-1940s after she began singing for
Jazz at the Philharmonic, a concert series begun by Granz. With the demise of the
swing era and the decline of the great touring
big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of
bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with
Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including
scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled: "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."
Verve years in Finland in April 1963 estate In July 1954, Fitzgerald made her first tour of
Australia for the Australian-based American promoter
Lee Gordon. This was the first of Gordon's famous "Big Show" promotions and the "package" tour also included
Buddy Rich,
Artie Shaw and comedian
Jerry Colonna. Although the tour was a big hit with audiences and set a new box office record for Australia, it was marred by an incident of racial discrimination that caused Fitzgerald to miss the first two concerts in
Sydney, and Gordon had to arrange two later free concerts to compensate ticket holders. Although the four members of Fitzgerald's entourage – Fitzgerald, her pianist
John Lewis, her assistant (and cousin) Georgiana Henry, and manager Norman Granz – all had first-class tickets on their scheduled
Pan-American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Australia, they were ordered to leave the aircraft after they had already boarded and were refused permission to re-board the aircraft to retrieve their luggage and clothing. As a result, they were stranded in
Honolulu for three days before they could get another flight to Sydney. Although a contemporary Australian press report quoted an Australian Pan-Am spokesperson who denied that the incident was racially based, Fitzgerald, Henry, Lewis and Granz filed a civil suit for racial discrimination against
Pan-Am in December 1954, which they won on appeal in January 1956. In a 1970 television interview Fitzgerald said they received what she described as a "nice settlement". Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's
Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts by 1955. She left Decca, and Granz, now her manager, created
Verve Records around her. Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying: "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman ... felt that I should do other things, so he produced
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book with me. It was a turning point in my life." after
Marilyn Monroe lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career.
Bonnie Greer dramatized the incident as the musical drama,
Marilyn and Ella, in 2008. It had previously been widely reported that Fitzgerald was the first black performer to play the Mocambo, following Monroe's intervention, but this is not true. African-American singers
Herb Jeffries,
Eartha Kitt, and
Joyce Bryant all played the Mocambo in 1952 and 1953, according to stories published at the time in
Jet magazine and
Billboard.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, released in 1956, was the first of eight "Song Book" sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the
Great American Songbook. Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience. The sets are the most well-known items in her discography, and by 1956, Fitzgerald's recordings were showcased nationally by
Ben Selvin within the
RCA Thesaurus transcription library.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book was the only Song Book on which the composer Fitzgerald interpreted played with her.
Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator
Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald. The Song Book series ended up becoming Fitzgerald's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture.
The New York Times wrote in 1996: "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration." Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances two years later. ==Film and television==