When Ella Fitzgerald took to the stage for a talent contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater at age 17, she was homeless, shabbily dressed and wearing men's boots.
She'd planned to dance. But she had to perform right after some girls wearing sequined gowns and dancing pumps, and she was scared stiff.
Her knees were shaking, but Fitzgerald resolved not to let her fear get the best of her.
Instead, she started to sing and took home first prize, gaining the recognition that soon landed her a job in Chick Webb's Big Band.
Fitzgerald (1917-96) suffered stage fright throughout her career. Yet she refused to let it hold her back.
"I get nerve from somewhere," she said in an "American Masters" documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something to Live For."
She was raised in Yonkers, N.Y., but wound up in a reformatory school after her mother died when Ella was 15. Later, she struggled on her own in Harlem.
The talent show victory launched her 60-year singing career, in which she sold more than 40 million albums, earning her the moniker the First Lady of Song.
Once she discovered her passion for music, she put everything she had into it.
"I think the whole essence of Ella Fitzgerald is the one place in the world that she really wanted to be is on stage singing," Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson told National Public Radio. "And really she dedicated her whole life to this."
The Right Tone
"She was a master of technique, able to leap octaves, split tones, reinvent melodies and dance all over complex rhythms," said Newsweek.
Ira Gershwin once remarked, "I had never realized just how good our songs really were until I heard them sung by Ella Fitzgerald."
Keter Betts, her bassist, told the Washington Post, "You take these certain gifted people, and the reason they rise above the others is because they're constantly sharpening their minds when they're not doing anything. Ella was constantly singing to herself at all times. We'd be on the plane, and she'd be sitting there singing. She'd call me back and bring up a tune and often we'd work out" an arrangement.
Fitzgerald's improvisations with nonsensical syllables, simulating an instrumental solo, came to be known as scat singing.
She constantly challenged herself to learn something new and keep up with the times. With big bands on the decline in the early '40s, "Fitzgerald did what many jazz musicians couldn't -- she made a seemingly effortless transition from swing to bebop," Washington Post critic Richard Harrington wrote. "In a way, she became just another horn, mastering the scat form of vocal improvisation and instrumental mimicry in ways that earned the respect of her peers."
While never forsaking her trademark scat singing, Fitzgerald soon moved beyond bebop, culminating in songbook albums featuring the work of popular American composers such as the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer.
"The eight songbooks issued between 1956 and 1964 remain the essential canon of American popular song," Harrington wrote.
Fitzgerald kept drawing crowds for six decades because she kept her performances fresh. And she always focused on the reason she was there: to please her audience.
That's why she constantly learned new songs, from rock to bluegrass.
"If you don't learn new songs, you're lost," she said in 1967. "No matter where we play, we have some of the younger generation coming to the club. It's a drag if you don't have anything to offer them."
Ageless
Even when she was in her late 60s, as soon as Fitzgerald walked on stage "the years would shed away and suddenly, you know, she would look 20, 30 years younger in attitude and exuberance and energy," Nicholson said. "This was just what Ella wanted to do all her life, is just sing for her people, as she put it."
Fitzgerald performed so regularly and with such intensity over the decades that even Cal Ripken, baseball's Iron Man, might be impressed. "In the '70s, after undergoing cataract surgery, she bounced back to touring more than 40 weeks a year," Newsweek wrote.
Betts recalled one incident when Fitzgerald had an abscessed tooth.
Promoters suggested canceling, but Fitzgerald wouldn't hear of it.
"We were getting ready to go on, and Ella's face was really out there ... and she went out and sang just like she did any other night," Betts said. "The next morning, it looked like she had fought Muhammad Ali. We flew home and took her right to the dentist and he lanced it. That's when I really knew that it was mind over matter. When the mind is in power, it doesn't matter."
This story originally ran Sept. 23, 2003, on Leaders & Success.
Source: Investor's Business Daily
