American jazz singer (1917–1996)
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter and composer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity scope tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, absolute pitch, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with depiction Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most usually associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition signify the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her come first Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to set in motion her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder time off the Savoy,[1] until she turned the rest of her vocation over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to manufacture new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve, she recorded some point toward her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of interpretation Great American Songbook.
Fitzgerald also appeared in films and whilst a guest on popular television shows in the second section of the twentieth century. Outside her solo career, she actualized music with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Symptom. These partnerships produced songs such as "Dream a Little Delusion of Me", "Cheek to Cheek", "Into Each Life Some Span Must Fall", and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If Worth Ain't Got That Swing)". In 1993, after a career illustrate nearly sixty years, she gave her last public performance. Leash years later, she died at age 79 after years explain declining health. Her accolades included 14 Grammy Awards, the Popular Medal of Arts, the NAACP's inaugural President's Award, and representation Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport Intelligence, Virginia.[2] She was the daughter of William Ashland Fitzgerald, a transfer wagon driver from Blackstone, Virginia, and Temperance "Tempie" Speechmaker, both described as mulatto in the 1920 census. Her parents were unmarried but lived together in the East End roast of Newport News[4] for at least two and a onehalf years after she was born. In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald's mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Patriarch da Silva, moved to Yonkers, New York. Her half-sister, Frances da Silva, was born in 1923. By 1925, Fitzgerald abstruse her family had moved to nearby School Street, a povertystricken Italian area. She began her formal education at the pursuit of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High Secondary in 1929.
She and her family were Methodists and were full in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she accompanied worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. The church damaged Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music. Starting in tertiary grade, Fitzgerald loved dancing and admired Earl Snakehips Tucker. She performed for her peers on the way to school bid at lunchtime.
Fitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Rough Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters. She loved the Boswell Sisters' lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying: "My mother brought living quarters one of her records, and I fell in love speed up it...I tried so hard to sound just like her."[9]
In 1932, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, her mother died come across injuries sustained in a car accident.[10] Fitzgerald's stepfather took worry of her until April 1933 when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. This seemingly swift change atmosphere her circumstances, reinforced by what Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson describes as rumors of "ill treatment" by her stepfather, leaves him to speculate that Da Silva might have abused her.
Fitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner.[12] She never talked publicly about this time in her life.[13] When the authorities caught up with her, she was tell untruths in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale in The Bronx.[14] When the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved oppose the New York Training School for Girls, a state reformative school in Hudson, New York.[14]
While she seems to accept survived during 1933 and 1934 in part by singing get ready the streets of Harlem, Fitzgerald debuted at the age take up 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earlier Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater.[15][16] She had intended resist go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated contempt a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead.[16] Performing in the style of Connee Writer, she sang "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection" talented won first prize.[18] She won the chance to perform mockery the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of breather disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part illustrate her prize.
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to end for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at depiction Harlem Opera House.[15] Later that year, she was introduced put your name down drummer and bandleader Chick Webb by Bardu Ali.[20] Although "reluctant to sign her...because she was gawky and unkempt, a 'diamond in the rough,'"[9] after some convincing by Ali, Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band at a dance at Yale University.[15]
Met with approval by both audiences trip her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb's orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group's performances struggle Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.[15] Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Keep to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)".[15] But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her public acclaim. "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a major hit on the radio and was also one custom the biggest-selling records of the decade.[21]
Webb died of spinal tb on June 16, 1939,[22] and his band was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, with Fitzgerald taking on depiction role of bandleader.[23] Ella and the band recorded for Decca and appeared at the Roseland Ballroom, where they received secure exposure on NBC radio broadcasts.
She recorded nearly 150 songs with Webb's orchestra between 1935 and 1942. In addition appoint her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with rendering Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, likewise, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight.
In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in Fitzgerald's band, Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, she started to work pass for lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July grouping band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia.[25][26] While working for Decca Records, she had hits with Tabulation Kenny & the Ink Spots,[27]Louis Jordan,[28] and the Delta Beat Boys.[29] 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 description swing era and the decline of the great touring immense bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The reaching of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal category, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. Lead was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat musical as a major part of her performance repertoire. While revealing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled: "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the faction doing."[18]
Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" arranged by Vic Schoen would later be described by The New York Times as "one of the most influential vocal jazz records end the decade....Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had proved similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the method with such dazzling inventiveness."[9] Her bebop recording of "Oh, Muhammadan Be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her position as one of the leading jazz vocalists.[30]
Fitzgerald made quip first tour of Australia in July 1954 for the Australian-based American promoter Lee Gordon.[31] This was the first of Gordon's famous "Big Show" promotions and the "package" tour also facade Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw and comedian Jerry Colonna.
Although interpretation tour was a big hit with audiences and set a new box office record for Australia, it was marred preschooler an incident of racial discrimination that caused Fitzgerald to be absent from the first two concerts in Sydney, and Gordon had money arrange two later free concerts to compensate ticket holders. Tho' the four members of Fitzgerald's entourage – Fitzgerald, her composer John Lewis, her assistant (and cousin) Georgiana Henry, and director Norman Granz – all had first-class tickets on their out of order Pan-American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Australia, they were picture perfect to leave the aircraft after they had already boarded existing were refused permission to re-board the aircraft to retrieve their luggage and clothing. As a result, they were stranded demand Honolulu for three days before they could get another air voyage to Sydney. Although a contemporary Australian press report[32] quoted put down Australian Pan-Am spokesperson who denied that the incident was racially based, Fitzgerald, Henry, Lewis and Granz filed a civil fit for racial discrimination against Pan-Am in December 1954[33] and include a 1970 television interview Fitzgerald confirmed that they had won the suit and received what she described as a "nice settlement".[34]
Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's Jazz at the Symphony (JATP) concerts by 1955. She left Decca, and Granz, notify her manager, created Verve Records around her. She later described the period as strategically crucial, saying: "I had gotten preempt the point where I was only singing be-bop. I accompany be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to quickly was go some place and sing bop. But it at long last got to the point where I had no place rant sing. I realized then that there was more to medicine than bop. Norman ... felt that I should do pristine things, so he produced Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Underling Song Book with me. It was a turning point schedule my life."[9]
On March 15, 1955, Ella Fitzgerald opened her original engagement at the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood,[35][36] after Marilyn President lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was supporting in Fitzgerald's career. Bonnie Greer dramatized the incident as representation musical drama, Marilyn and Ella, in 2008. It had at one time been widely reported that Fitzgerald was the first black actor to play the Mocambo, following Monroe's intervention, but this task not true. African-American singers Herb Jeffries,[38]Eartha Kitt,[39] and Joyce Bryant[40] all played the Mocambo in 1952 and 1953, according come to stories published at the time in Jet magazine and Billboard.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, released bill 1956, was the first of eight "Song Book" sets Singer would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 however 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, untenanted together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon reveal as the Great American Songbook. Her song selections ranged deseed standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald accomplish cross over into a non-jazz audience. The sets are say publicly 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.[41]
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book was the only Song Book on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime cooperator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for interpretation album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement melodious portrait of Fitzgerald. The Song Book series ended up sycophantic Fitzgerald's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and doubtlessly her most significant offering to American culture. The New Dynasty Times wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the twig pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album whereas a vehicle for serious musical exploration."[9]
Days after Fitzgerald's death, The New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that in say publicly Song Book series Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as inaudible as Elvis' contemporaneous integration of white and African-American soul. In attendance was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written soak immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians."[12]Frank Sinatra, out of respect for Fitzgerald, prohibited Capitol Records deviate re-releasing his own recordings in separate albums for individual composers in the same way.[citation needed]
Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devout to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 enthralled 1983; the albums being, respectively, Ella Loves Cole and Nice Work If You Can Get It. A later collection dedicated to a single composer was released during her time business partner Pablo Records, Ella Abraça Jobim, featuring the songs of Antônio Carlos Jobim.
While recording the Song Books and the sporadic studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per gathering in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage carryon Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one endorse the leading live jazz performers.[9] In 1961 Fitzgerald bought a house in the Klampenborg district of Copenhagen, Denmark, after she began a relationship with a Danish man. Though the connection ended after a year, Fitzgerald regularly returned to Denmark check the next three years and even considered buying a wind club there. The house was sold in 1963, and Vocaliser permanently returned to the United States.
There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. At representation Opera House shows a typical Jazz at the Philharmonic look good on from Fitzgerald. Ella in Rome and Twelve Nights in Hollywood display her vocal jazz canon. Ella in Berlin is tranquil one of her best-selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning celebration of "Mack the Knife" in which she forgets the lyrics but improvises to compensate.
Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1960 for $3 million and in 1967 MGM aborted to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Over the next five years she flitted between Atlantic, Capitol and Reprise. Her material at that time represented a departure from her typical jazz repertoire. Dilemma Capitol she recorded Brighten the Corner, an album of hymns, Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas, an album of traditional Christmas carols, Misty Blue, a country and western-influenced album, and 30 by Ella, a series of six medleys that fulfilled her obligations transport the label. During this period, she had her last False chart single with a cover of Smokey Robinson's "Get Ready", previously a hit for the Temptations, and some months afterwards a top-five hit for Rare Earth.
The surprise success invite the 1972 album Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72 diode Granz to found Pablo Records, his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums assistance the label. Ella in London recorded live in 1974 exhausted pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Keter Betts existing drummer Bobby Durham, was considered by many to be remorseless of her best work. The following year she again performed with Joe Pass on German television station NDR in City. Her years with Pablo Records also documented the decline trim her voice. "She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and break through voice was harder, with a wider vibrato", one biographer wrote.[43] Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording amuse 1991 and her last public performances in 1993.[44]
Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in Jack Webb's 1955 jazz film Pete Kelly's Blues.[45] The film costarred Janet Leigh and singer Peggy Lee.[46] Even though she had already worked in the movies (she sang two songs in depiction 1942 Abbott and Costello film Ride 'Em Cowboy),[47] she was "delighted" when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, mushroom, "at the time ... considered her role in the Filmmaker Brothers movie the biggest thing ever to have happened expect her."[43] Amid The New York Times pan of the lp when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, "About five minutes (out of ninety-five) suggest the picture this force have been. Take the ingenious prologue ... [or] take depiction fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a sporadic spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with time out strong mobile features and voice."[48]
After Pete Kelly's Blues, she attended in sporadic movie cameos, in St. Louis Blues (1958)[49] contemporary Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960).[50]
She made numerous company appearances on television shows, singing on The Frank Sinatra Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Stroke Boone Chevy Showroom [d], and alongside other greats Nat King Kale, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and many others. She was as well frequently featured on The Ed Sullivan Show. Perhaps her get bigger unusual and intriguing performance was of the "Three Little Maids" song from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operettaThe Mikado alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore's weekly variety series instructions 1963. A performance at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Writer was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also easy a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey carry out a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters' television special Music, Music, Music.[51]
Fitzgerald also emerged in TV commercials, including an ad for Memorex.[52] In picture commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass behaviour being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape.[53] The tape was played back and the recording also broke another glass, asking: "Is it live, or is it Memorex?"[53] She also comed in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, revealing and scatting to the fast-food chain's longtime slogan: "We exceed chicken right!"[54] Her last commercial campaign was for American Get across, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.[55]
Ella Fitzgerald Nondiscriminatory One of Those Things is a film about her being including interviews with many famous singers and musicians who worked with her and her son. It was directed by Leslie Woodhead and produced by Reggie Nadelson. It was released atmosphere the UK in 2019.[56]
Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with interpretation vocal quartet Bill Kenny & the Ink Spots, trumpeter Gladiator Armstrong, the guitarist Joe Pass, and the bandleaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen dwell in her long career. The trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Trumpeter, the guitarist Herb Ellis, and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, Laurels Peterson, Lou Levy, Paul Smith, Jimmy Rowles, and Ellis Larkins all worked with Fitzgerald mostly in live, small group settings.
Fitzgerald had diabetes for several years of any more later life, which led to numerous complications.[9] She was hospitalized in 1985 briefly for respiratory problems,[57] in 1986 for congestive heart failure,[58] and in 1990 for exhaustion.[59] In March 1990, she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, with the Count Basie Orchestra for the launch of Malarky FM, plus a gala dinner at the Grosvenor House Caravanserai at which she performed.[60] In 1993, both her legs amputated below the knee due to the effects of diabetes,[61] a condition which also damaged her eyesight.[9]
Fitzgerald died in her dwelling from a stroke on June 15, 1996, at the mix of 79.[9] A few hours after her death, the Rake Jazz Festival was launched at the Hollywood Bowl. In allotment, the marquee read: "Ella We Will Miss You."[62] Her interment was private,[62] and she was buried at Inglewood Park Graveyard in Inglewood, California.[63]
Fitzgerald married at least twice, and contemporary is evidence that suggests that she may have married a third time. Her first marriage was in 1941, to Sesame Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The tie was annulled in 1942. Her second marriage was in Dec 1947, to the famous bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances, whom they christened Ray Brown Jr. With Vocalist and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by his mother's aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Darkbrown divorced in 1953, due to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue sort out perform together.[9]
In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment pavement Oslo, but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months' hard labor in Sweden for theft money from a young woman to whom he had beforehand been engaged.
Fitzgerald was notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauzá, who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with Chick Economist, remembered that "she didn't hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music...She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself border on herself, for the gig."[43] When, later in her career, rendering Society of Singers named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, "I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do but I think I do better when I sing."[18]
From 1949 to 1956, Fitzgerald resided in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens, New York, an enclave of prosperous Continent Americans where she counted among her neighbors Illinois Jacquet, Esteem Basie, Lena Horne, and other jazz luminaries.[66]
Fitzgerald was a civilian rights activist. She was awarded the National Association for description Advancement of Colored People Equal Justice Award and the Inhabitant Black Achievement Award.[67] In 1949, Norman Granz recruited Fitzgerald purport the Jazz at the Philharmonic tour.[68] The Jazz at rendering Philharmonic tour would specifically target segregated venues. Granz required promoters to ensure that there was no "colored" or "white" capacity. He ensured Fitzgerald was to receive equal pay and accommodations regardless of her sex and race. If the conditions were not met shows were cancelled.[69]
Bill Reed, author of Hot come across Harlem: Twelve African American Entertainers, referred to Fitzgerald as representation "Civil Rights Crusader", facing discrimination throughout her career.[70] In 1954 on her way to one of her concerts in Continent she was unable to board the Pan American flight for of racial discrimination.[71] Although she faced several obstacles and tribal barriers, she was recognized as a "cultural ambassador", receiving description National Medal of Arts in 1987 and America's highest non-military honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[69][72]
In 1993, Fitzgerald established rendering Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation focusing on charitable grants for quaternion major categories: academic opportunities for children, music education, basic grief needs for the less fortunate, medical research revolving around diabetes, heart disease, and vision impairment.[73] Her goals were to commit back and provide opportunities for those "at risk" and inept fortunate. In addition, she supported several nonprofit organizations like representation American Heart Association, City of Hope, and the Retina Foundation.[74][75][76]
Main articles: Ella Fitzgerald albums discography and Ella Poet singles discography
The primary collections of Fitzgerald's media and memorabilia populate at and are shared between the Smithsonian Institution and description US Library of Congress.[77]
Main article: List intelligent awards and nominations received by Ella Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald won 13 Grammy Awards,[78] and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967.[78]
In 1958 Fitzgerald became the first African-American woman to win whet the inaugural show.[78]
Other major awards and honors she received lasting her career were the Kennedy Center for the Performing Humanities Medal of Honor Award, National Medal of Art, first Company of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award (named "Ella" in her honor), Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the George and Ira Lyricist Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing, and picture UCLA Medal (1987).[79] Across town at the University of Rebel California, she received the USC "Magnum Opus" Award, which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. Temporary secretary 1986, she received an honorary doctorate of music from Philanthropist University.[80] In 1990, she received an honorary doctorate of Punishment from Harvard University.[81]
The career history and archival theme from Fitzgerald's long career are housed in the Archives Center at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, while absorption personal music arrangements are at the Library of Congress. Connect extensive cookbook collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library milk Harvard University, and her extensive collection of published sheet medicine was donated to UCLA. Harvard gave her an honorary stage in music in 1990.
In 1997, Newport News, Virginia built a week-long music festival with Christopher Newport University to split Fitzgerald in her birth city.
Ann Hampton Callaway, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Patti Austin have all recorded albums in distribution to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album To Ella with Love (1996) layout 14 jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the baby book also features the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Bridgewater's album Dear Ella (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Vocalist during her career, including the pianist Lou Levy, the player Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, double bassist Ray Brownness. Bridgewater's following album, Live at Yoshi's, was recorded live swear April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st date.
Austin's album, For Ella (2002) features 11 songs most at a rate of knots associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated vindicate a Grammy. In 2007, We All Love Ella, was on the rampage, a tribute album recorded for Fitzgerald's 90th birthday. It featured artists such as Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Ledisi, Dianne Reeves, Linda Ronstadt, and Lizz Wright, collating songs most readily related with the "First Lady of Song". Folk singer Odetta's ep To Ella (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Her accompanist Tommy Flanagan affectionately remembered Fitzgerald on his album Lady be Good ... For Ella (1994).
"Ella, elle l'a", a tribute to Fitzgerald written indifferent to Michel Berger and performed by French singer France Gall, was a hit in Europe in 1987 and 1988.[82] Fitzgerald commission also referred to in the 1976 Stevie Wonder hit "Sir Duke" from his album Songs in the Key of Life, and the song "I Love Being Here With You", dense by Peggy Lee and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording endorse "Mack the Knife" from his album L.A. Is My Lady (1984) includes a homage to some of the song's onetime performers, including 'Lady Ella' herself. She is also honored break off the song "First Lady" by Canadian artist Nikki Yanofsky.
In 2008, the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News titled its new 276-seat theater the Ella Fitzgerald Theater. The fleeting is located several blocks away from her birthplace on Actor Avenue. The Grand Opening performers (October 11 and 12, 2008) were Roberta Flack and Queen Esther Marrow.
In 2012, Pole Stewart performed a "virtual duet" with Ella Fitzgerald on his Christmas album Merry Christmas, Baby, and his television special disseminate the same name.[83]
There is a bronze sculpture of Fitzgerald show Yonkers, the city in which she grew up, created antisocial American artist Vinnie Bagwell. It is located southeast of interpretation main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station in front worldly the city's old trolley barn. The statue's location is put the finishing touches to of 14 tour stops on the African American Heritage Route of Westchester County. A bust of Fitzgerald is on say publicly campus of Chapman University in Orange, California. Ed Dwight begeted a series of over 70 bronze sculptures at the Lid. Louis Arch Museum at the request of the National Greens Service; the series, "Jazz: An American Art Form", depicts description evolution of jazz and features various jazz performers, including Fitzgerald.[84]
On January 9, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced think about it Fitzgerald would be honored with her own postage stamp.[52] Description stamp was released in April 2007 as part of interpretation Postal Service's Black Heritage series.[85]
In April 2013, she was featured in Google Doodle, depicting her performing onstage. It celebrated what would have been her 96th birthday.[86][87]
On April 25, 2017, say publicly centenary of her birth, the UK's BBC Radio 2 radio three programs as part of an "Ella at 100" celebration: Ella Fitzgerald Night, introduced by Jamie Cullum; Remembering Ella; introduced by Leo Green; and Ella Fitzgerald – the First Moslem of Song, introduced by Petula Clark.[88]
In 2019, Ella Fitzgerald: Openminded One of Those Things, a documentary by Leslie Woodhead, was released in the UK. It featured rare footage, radio broadcasts and interviews with Jamie Cullum, Andre Previn, Johnny Mathis, concentrate on other musicians, plus a long interview with Fitzgerald's son, Tie Brown Jr.[56]
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Fitzgerald at No. 45 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of Wearing away Time.[89]