Ella Fitzgerald

Discover the incredible life and enduring legacy of Ella Fitzgerald in this captivating entry in the Up Close biography series about twentieth-century America.

That voice. That smooth, silky voice. It was Ella Fitzgerald’s trademark and the key to her success as a jazz singer. Her career began at a time when female musicians weren’t taken seriously and many music venues were segregated.

Performing constantly led to distant relationships with friends and family, but Fitzgerald never gave up life on the road because her passion, above everything else, was pleasing her fans.

Fitzgerald was an intensely private person, and parts of her life have been widely misreported because so little information about her is available. She also had a habit of altering the truth, often about her tumultuous childhood. A runaway at sixteen, Fitzgerald lived on the streets of Harlem and if not for a last-minute decision at an amateur night contest in 1934, the world might never have known the First Lady of Song.

Tanya Lee Stone’s biography includes several never-before-published details about this legendary singer, offering a rare glimpse into her little-known lifetime.