Remembering Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald by Carl Van Vechten. Source: Beinecke Library, Yale University

Ella Fitzgerald died twenty years ago today. She was the most versatile singer of the 20th century, a vocal virtuoso with perfect pitch. Her band reportedly tuned up their instruments to the sound of her voice. Ella Fitzgerald expressed the pantheon of human emotion with a clarity so acute she became the voice of postwar America and "the First Lady of Song." She was a flawless vocal tactician with the range of an orchestra. Fitzgerald could make her voice sound like the blaring of a trumpet, the plinking of piano keys, or the tsk of the high hat.

Every song she sang became an absolute truth. In Summertime, when she sang "your father is rich and your mother is good looking," that lyric became a statement of fact.

Her contemporaries had immense strengths as singers, but Fitzgerald was able to combine all their best traits and create magic. She had Dinah Washington's emotional heft and smoothness, Carmen McRae's gift of interpretation, and Nancy Wilson's light touch with a lyric. Ms. Fitzgerald sang with an enchanting confidence and easy manner. Tony Bennett still works in her style, sauntering through the world of Pop deploying a charm out of time with the unearned hauteur required of contemporary singers. 

Ella Fitzgerald was always the coolest person on stage. When she performed duets with Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, men known for their easy banter and confidence, they had to work up to her level of nonchalance.

Ms. Fitzgerald has been gone for twenty years, but her legendary voice is still here, a mesmerizing delight. 

Bessie Smith's Blues: A Playlist

Bessie Smith. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1936.

Bessie Smith recorded her first song "Cemetery Blues" ninety-three years ago. Her ribald tales of good times and regret built Columbia Records into a powerhouse music label. Smith's powerful and plaintive voice gave her songs a particularly clear and visceral resonance that still touches listeners today. The tempo of early Blues is slow by contemporary standards, but her songs are incredibly fresh. People still fall in love and make a mess of romantic entanglements today like they have for thousands of years. In the decades since her death, some of her hits have been recorded by artists including Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Bobby Womack, and Van Halen.

Bessie Smith and her Blues singing contemporaries along with the female stars of Pre Code Hollywood films, were among the few women who openly expressed sexual desire in art forms enjoyed by mass audiences nationwide in the early 20th century. The frankness of the Blues provided riveting social commentary on the changing sexual, gender and political mores of the time. Straddling the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression, Bessie Smith's music was a soundtrack of the complex black experiences born of the Great Migration.

It is easy to dip into Ms. Smith's music and become enamored with her. The highs of love and the depths of loneliness and despair have been a constant in human experience. Smith's catalog lends itself to be mixed and matched to create a playlist to suit almost any mood. The following songs follow the story arc of a woman who has lived the high life of good booze and fine men and found herself destitute and alone. Bessie Smith's music is Blues at its finest, passion and pathos in song.