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Grand Forks Public Library North Dakota - Becoming Ella Fitzgerald The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song by Judith Tick 01 January 2024 ( news )
Grand Forks Public Library , state North Dakota ( By Press Release office)
Jan 01,2024
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A landmark biography that reclaims Ella Fitzgerald as a major American artist and modernist innovator .
Ella Fitzgerald ( 1917–1996 ) possessed one of the twentieth century’s most astonishing voices . In this first major biography since Fitzgerald’s death , historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk - taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist .
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald
clears up long - enduring mysteries . Archival research and in - depth family interviews shed new light on the singer’s difficult childhood in Yonkers , New York , the tragic death of her mother , and the year she spent in a girls’ reformatory school―where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer . Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald’s tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury .
Tick’s compelling narrative depicts Fitzgerald’s complicated career in fresh and original detail , upending the traditional view that segregates vocal jazz from the genre’s mainstream . As she navigated the shifting tides between jazz and pop , she used her originality to pioneer modernist vocal jazz . Interpreting long - lost setlists , reviews from both white and Black newspapers , and newly released footage and recordings , the book explores how Ella’s transcendence as an improvisor produced onstage performances every bit as significant as her historic recorded oeuvre .
From the singer’s first performance at the Apollo Theatre’s famous “Amateur Night” to the Savoy Ballroom , where Fitzgerald broke through with Chick Webb’s big band in the 1930s , Tick evokes the jazz world in riveting detail . She describes how Ella helped shape the bebop movement in the 1940s , as she joined Dizzy Gillespie and her then - husband , Ray Brown , in the world - touring Jazz at the Philharmonic , one of the first moments of high - culture acceptance for the disreputable art form .
Breaking ground as a female bandleader , Fitzgerald refuted expectations of musical Blackness , deftly balancing artistic ambition and market expectations . Her legendary exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s fused a Black vocal aesthetic and jazz improvisation to revolutionize the popular repertoire . This hybridity often confounded critics , yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s , Ella reached audiences around the world , electrifying concert halls , and sold millions of records .
A masterful biography ,
Becoming Ella Fitzgeralddescribes a powerful woman who set a standard for American excellence nearly unmatched in the twentieth century .
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