Like many renowned artists, Ella Fitzgerald always knew what she wanted to do in life. Unfortunately for her, those dreams of becoming a dancer were dashed once her voice got recognized instead of her shimmy-shake, so she had to settle for becoming one of the most beloved, versatile, and celebrated jazz vocalists of all time. For nearly 60 years — from her 1934 amateur night debut at Harlem’s Apollo Theater to her 1992 set at the opening of West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center — Fitzgerald steadily toured across the United States and around the world, while also recording nearly 300 singles and five dozen studio albums. And as Judith Tick lays out in her deeply researched new biography “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald,” the First Lady of Song did it her way, with a tireless determination, daring imagination, and hard-won rapport with audiences that belied an innate shyness.
Fitzgerald is the consummate artist in Tick’s telling, focused almost exclusively on her craft. For the most part, “Becoming” shares that focus by comprehensively examining Fitzgerald’s live performances, studio sessions, and professional decision-making. Tick draws on a wealth of contemporaneous criticism and interviews that not only show how attitudes toward Fitzgerald evolved but offer a fascinating look at a vanished media ecosystem featuring both influential specialty publications, like Down Beat magazine, and small outlets with national reach, like the Chicago Defender. Absent today’s PR micromanagement, Fitzgerald had candid, casual conversations with journalists where she erected her own guardrails, swerving into hot-button topics rarely and reluctantly, preferring to talk about the music and, in today’s parlance, stay in her lane.
Tick follows Fitzgerald through her years with Chick Webb’s orchestra, subsequent tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic, and collaborations with numerous fellow icons such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Nelson Riddle, and Count Basie. A former music history professor at Northeastern University, Tick writes authoritatively about the various subgenres that Fitzgerald dips into and out of over the years. And while she covers vast amounts of information, “Becoming” is most interesting when Tick allows her gaze to linger a little, as with in-depth looks at the genesis of Fitzgerald’s “Mack the Knife” — you’ll never listen to the 1960 live version in the same way — or “Oh, Lady Be Good,” written by George Gershwin. The many musical references that Fitzgerald interpolates in the latter offer “a powerful example of Fitzgerald’s aesthetic purpose in channeling her phonographic memory, reaching out to musicians at one level and multiple audiences on another. It is a timeless strategy, a perfect example of what Leopold Mozart advised his son Wolfgang to do — write both for […] the connoisseurs and the public at large.”
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Tick does not dish gossip or delve overly deep into Fitzgerald’s private life, though she does cover a handful of major relationships, especially her five-year marriage to bass player Ray Brown, with whom she shared custody of her adopted nephew. Unsurprisingly for a book so devoted to Fitzgerald’s career, the side characters who get the most attention are her managers — Savoy Ballroom impresario Moe Gale and Verve records founder Norman Granz. The latter took over in 1954 and helped broaden Fitzgerald’s audience, by booking more exclusive venues, and expand her recording repertoire, by moving her from Decca to his own label.
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A hallmark of Fitzgerald’s Verve years, and an essential part of her legacy, is her series of albums dedicated to seminal artists like Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, and George and Ira Gershwin. These eight individual projects showcased Fitzgerald’s range and helped define the Great American Songbook. But her musical interests also looked forward, as she constantly incorporated the next big thing, performing hits by the Beatles, Barbra Streisand, Marvin Gaye, and others. This experimentation stemmed partly from a desire to challenge herself and partly from a desire to please her audiences, which remained a constant barometer. As Tick writes, “Despite her iconic status, Fitzgerald still treated each performance as a trial of her ability to satisfy her audience. Every performance meant a fresh challenge. When listeners met her with indifference or refused to respond, she was undone.”
Another constant in Fitzgerald’s career was how often she overcame forces standing in the way of her success. Early on, many saw her as just another “girl singer,” more necessary evil than valued partner. Tick also highlights the various incarnations of racism that Fitzgerald and her fellow musicians faced, including a harrowing 1954 incident in Charleston, S.C., which shows how depressingly little has changed in 70 years. While Fitzgerald was generally reticent to address such issues, when she did speak out, she did so directly and prominently, as when calling out the fact that in 1954 she — unlike numerous white vocalists — did not have her own TV show.
Despite this environment, Fitzgerald continued to believe that music could help bridge racial and generational divides. What a gift then to read “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald” at a time when you can easily supplement Tick’s insights by queuing up almost any track she mentions. It’s one thing to read that the Los Angeles Times said Fitzgerald “mowed down her audience” at the Hollywood Bowl in 1956, but nothing compares to hearing that version of “Air Mail Special.” We’re still Fitzgerald’s audience, and that mattered more than anything. As she told the Washington Post in 1986, “I don’t crochet, I don’t knit. I love to sing. I love people. That’s just me.”
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BECOMING ELLA FITZGERALD: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
By Judith Tick
Norton, 592 pp., $40
Cory Oldweiler is a freelance critic and writer.