walking upstream…
Ella Fitzgerald
photo: carl van vechten · public domain ↗Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald, jazz's "First Lady of Song," turned an unimaginably pure and elastic instrument into the definitive standard for vocal jazz over a six-decade career, from her 1938 novelty hit "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" with Chick Webb's orchestra through the Songbook albums that canonized the American popular repertoire. Discovered as a teenager at Harlem's Apollo Theater amateur night, she built her style out of pinpoint intonation, ebullient scat improvisation, and a horn player's sense of time, absorbed from the swing and blues singers she idolized as a girl in Yonkers.
the sound in question
1938
A-Tisket, A-TasketElla Fitzgerald
walk the tributaries ↓
Connee Boswell1930s · Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Swing / Pop
Fitzgerald named Boswell as her first and biggest idol, patterning her earliest public performances directly on Boswell's records — she won her legendary 1934 Apollo Theater amateur-night debut singing songs from the Boswell Sisters' songbook.
listen: upstream & here
1935
The Object of My AffectionConnee Boswell
1936
(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)Ella Fitzgerald
listen forListen for the way Fitzgerald bends and stretches a melody's rhythm rather than singing it straight — the same free, conversational phrasing and playful vocal-group patter Boswell pioneered with her sisters.
Louis Armstrong1920s–30s · Jazz
Fitzgerald grew up on Armstrong's records and, once she moved from straight swing vocals into full-blown scat in the mid-1940s, was extending a horn-like improvisatory vocabulary he had introduced two decades earlier; the two later became recurring recording partners and close friends.
listen: upstream & heresource: Wikipedia — Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong collaborations ↗
1926
Heebie JeebiesLouis Armstrong
1947
How High the MoonElla Fitzgerald
listen forListen for scat singing itself — nonsense syllables treated as a horn line — a technique Armstrong is credited with popularizing on record, which Fitzgerald pushed into dazzling, bebop-inflected new territory.
Chick Webb1930s · Swing / Big band / Jazz
Webb, the bandleader who discovered Fitzgerald at 17 and became her legal guardian so he could hire her into his orchestra, shaped her into a professional singer inside his hard-swinging Savoy Ballroom outfit, giving her the rhythmic foundation and stage discipline of the swing era.
listen: upstream & heresource: WBGO Jazz — Ella Fitzgerald's debut with Chick Webb ↗
1934
Stompin' at the SavoyChick Webb
1939
UndecidedElla Fitzgerald
listen forListen for the tight, driving big-band swing feel underneath her voice on her earliest hits — the pocket she learned keeping time with one of the era's most explosive drummer-bandleaders.