Ella Fitzgerald to be Commemorated on Postage Stamp

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The Postal Service honors Ella Fitzgerald as the 30th inductee into its Black Heritage stamp series ti be issued in 2007. Fitzgerald (1917-1996) was widely known as "The First Lady of Song." Her extraordinary vocal range and flexibility, combined with her gift for pitch, rhythmic sense, and flawless diction, made her a favorite of fans, songwriters and other singers. The stamp image is a portrait based on a photograph taken circa 1956 that captures the joy and excitement that Fitzgerald brought to music.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born April 25, 1917, in Newport News, VA. She was still very young when she moved with her mother to Yonkers, New York. From an early age, she loved to sing and dance. Although charmed by her performances, people laughed when she told them she was going to be famous. In 1932, after her mother died, she went to live with her aunt in Harlem. By the time she was 16, she was on her own, dancing on the street for tips. In November 1934, Fitzgerald entered an amateur competition at the historic Apollo Theater to show off her dancing skill. At the last minute, she decided to sing instead, and was named the winner. Not long after that, at the Harlem Opera House, she won another talent competition.

Her success as an amateur brought Fitzgerald to the attention of bandleader and drummer Chick Webb, who hired her to sing with his orchestra. In 1938, she and Webb had a number-one hit record with "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a novelty song Fitzgerald co-wrote with Van Alexander, based on a child's rope-skipping rhyme. In this early phase of her career, Fitzgerald showed her mastery of swing music. After Webb's death in June of 1939, the band was billed as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra until its members went their separate ways in 1942.

The song "Flying Home", recorded in the fall of 1945, is widely considered a masterpiece of scat singing - the vocalizing of nonsense syllables, often as if the singer were an instrumental soloist. Fitzgerald's scat reflected her growing interest in bebop, a jazz style that improvised around chords and harmony, as well as melody. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, one of the architects of bebop, encouraged Fitzgerald to "sit in" for jam sessions with his band.

"Listening to Dizzy made me want to try something with my voice that would be like a horn", Fitzgerald said. "He'd shout, 'Go ahead and blow' and I would improvise." Her recordings of songs like "Lady Be Good" and "How High the Moon" consolidated Fitzgerald's reputation as a jazz singer. "How High the Moon" became one of her signature tunes.

The next phase of Fitzgerald's career found her joining forces with concert promoter Norman Granz, who produced many of her albums over the years. In 1956, Fitzgerald began recording the Cole Porter Songbook, a best-selling album that launched a timeless series of "Songbook" recordings of the works of great American songwriters. She recorded more than 200 standards for the "Songbook" albums, among them works by Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, and Johnny Mercer.

An early highlight among Fitzgerald's several dozen albums was Ella Sings Gershwin, a precursor to her "Songbook" project, recorded in 1950. The later George and Ira Gershwin Songbook is cited by many as one of Fitzgerald's most special collections. Her Duke Ellington Songbook also has many admirers. Her collaborations with Louis Armstrong, including Ella and Louis, were among her most popular efforts. Armstrong was only one of the celebrated musicians with whom Fitzgerald recorded and performed. Others included Count Basie, Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson.

Many of Fitzgerald's fans treasure her "live" albums. Three of her most admired live recordings were made before audiences in Europe — Ella in Rome, Ella in Berlin and Ella Returns to Berlin.

For decades, she kept up a numbing schedule of recording and touring internationally, often working 40 weeks a year. Fitzgerald broke many racial barriers — she was the first black artist to appear in various exclusive clubs around the United States, including the famed Copacabana in New York, in June 1957. She sang at the inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy on Jan. 20, 1961.

Fitzgerald appeared in a small number of Hollywood films, including Ride 'Em Cowboy, a 1942 comedy with Abbott and Costello. In 1955, she had a role as a singer in Pete Kelly's Blues, preserving a glimpse of what it would have been like to see her perform in a nightclub. She also appeared in St. Louis Blues, released in 1958, and Let No Man Write My Epitaph in 1960.

Over the years, Fitzgerald won 13 Grammy Awards and many other honors, including the National Medal of Arts, presented to her in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan. She was one of five artists awarded Kennedy Center Honors in 1979. In 1989, the Society of Singers created an award for lifetime achievement, called it the "Ella", and made her its first recipient.

Fitzgerald continued to perform up until a few years before her death, when failing health compelled her reluctant retirement. She died at her home in Beverly Hills, CA, on June 15, 1996. Fans and colleagues alike mourned the passing of this beloved singer. Ira Gershwin once remarked, "I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them."

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