Paul Bailey, The Oldie's theatre critic for many years, has sadly died at 87. Here he reviews a new biography of Ella Fitzgerald
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
by Judith Tick
(Norton, £30)
Ella Fitzgerald’s first, overriding ambition was to become a dancer.
When she made her debut on the radio talent show Harlem Amateur Hour on November 21, 1934, she was still contemplating a career in dance, according to her latest biographer Judith Tick.
She had chosen to sing that night a number written by Hoagy Carmichael. It was called ‘Judy’, and it contains the line ‘If she seems a saint, but you find that she ain’t, that’s Judy.’
It was a surprising choice for an innocent-looking, nervous 17-year-old girl to make. She was so terrified when she walked on stage that she sang the opening words in a croaky voice that was decidedly off-key. The audience, who had been encouraged to boo and shout abuse if they thought an act was terrible, duly did.
It was then that the MC, Ralph Cooper, intervened: ‘This young lady’s got a gift she’d like to share with you tonight. She’s just having a little trouble getting it out of its wrapper. Let’s give her a second chance.’
They obliged. Ella’s croakiness was gone and she hit all the right notes. Norma Miller, a professional hoofer who had booed her minutes before, said to a reporter afterwards ‘Honey, we heard a voice. She shut us up so fast, you could hear a rat pissing on cotton.’
Within a matter of months, Ella was singing with Chick Webb’s band. He had been reluctant to employ her to begin with, but finally took her on. The diminutive drummer, who was afflicted with spinal tuberculosis, and had forged a way into the jazz scene by sheer determination, as well as blazing talent, soon found himself basking in a shared glory with the shy girl from the sticks.
Their first major success was with the song ‘A-tisket, A-tasket’, which is little more than a nursery rhyme set to the simplest of tunes. Even so, the freshness and warmth of Ella’s singing and the high-spirited accompaniment provided by Chick Webb and his musicians, stirred something in the public’s imagination and made Ella Fitzgerald someone to watch out for in the future.
The title of this painstaking book is apt, for it tells the story of a talent that constantly renewed itself. Ella, despite her enormous success, was never wholly satisfied with her achievements. Some puritan ethic, instilled in her by her mother and aunt, perhaps, was there to remind her that she could always do better.
Judith Tick observes that when Ella was at her very best, it was because she was in the company of people she looked up to – like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and the incomparable Oscar Peterson.
I recall a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, in which Ella sang in the first half to the accompaniment of a perfectly adequate pianist. In the second half, she did a set with Peterson which positively glowed, not least for the joyous sounds they made together. They smiled at one another throughout.
Judith Tick, a professor emerita at Boston’s Northeastern University, is an always reliable narrator. She is fine when she is writing about her subject’s unusual childhood, her time in a remand home for difficult children in upstate New York, where she learned to read music, her first job as a look-out for a brothel in Yonkers, where she alerted the madam of the house whenever she sighted policemen in the area, and her ultimate salvation through music.
The problem facing any biographer is that Ella, who remained inordinately shy all her life, was not given to breast-beating. She guarded her privacy. She supported several worthy causes, particularly those concerned with Black children from deprived backgrounds, but never boasted about it.
It was the singing that mattered. Ella took her voice almost everywhere on the planet. Tick names all the places, all the dates, and this reader found himself wilting as fact followed fact. It was thanks to the entrepreneur Norman Granz, Ella’s Svengali, that Ella will live on. Under his aegis, she recorded the songbooks of Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Gershwin and others. She reminded Americans of their musical and literary heritage. It is her lasting gift to us.
It’s pointless to compare her to Billie Holiday, who is great in a different way. The two were friends. And it’s moving to think of her admirers, such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Janet Baker, who envied her perfect pitch, and many more. I have loved her for 60 years, and thanks to her I know all the lyrics of the songs she restored to life in her glorious heyday.
