Ella Fitzgerald: The Decca Years (2 of 9)



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		The DECCA Years, Vol. One, 1935 - 1938 featuring CHICK WEBB AND HIS ORCHESTRA Liner notes by Will Friedwald PAGE 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| 5 \| 6 \| 7 \| 8 \| 9 \| Track Listing
		`All of Fitzgerald's career` in the nearly 60 years since then, we are told, came from that single evening's triumph at the Apollo. The implications of that competition are so overwhelming that they have obscured almost everything else about Fitzgerald's early life. We basically only know she was born in Newport News, Virginia, seventy five years ago on April 25, 1917. Both her natural father and that town were never even vague shadows to her, because as an infant she moved to Yonkers with her stepfather and mother. Chick Webb and his wife were later given legal guardianship of the underage Ella so she could travel with the band and sign contracts. This is one point when our knowledge of Fitzgerald's early life is especially sketchy: its been written that her mother died when Fitzgerald was in her early teens, and from that point various stories claim that Fitzgerald was raised in an orphanage, by an aunt and that she ran away from home. However, there's every reason to believe the elder Fitzgerald was alive until at least until the early '40s and that other tellings simply represented better press copy. Even less is known about Fitzgerald's pre-Apollo musical career. She's mentioned an aborted attempt at studying the piano and just barely learning to read music, and singing in church and school choirs. Fitzgerald has also spoken of winning other amateur contests in the early '30s, and a chance to appear on the radio with Arthur "The Street Singer" Tracy which she supposedly forfeited with the confusion following the death of her mother. (The latter story, retold varying details, again does not necessarily hold water.) This site rescued by media.org.