Austin Lindy Hop
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Austin Lindy Hop
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Ella grew up in poverty in Harlem, and lived virtually homeless during the year before her first break. Ella initially wanted to be a dancer, and entered a few talent contests as a dancer before giving singing a try. In 1934 she entered and won an amateur singing contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Benny Carter, a legendary jazz saxophonist who played with Chick Webb's orchestra at the time, was in the audience at that Apollo contest. Carter brought Ella to the attention to Chick Webb, one of the most influential and popular big band leaders in Harlem who played regularly at the Savoy Ballroom. Webb frankly considered Ella too ugly to front a band at first, but reluctantly agreed to let her sing with his orchestra for one night, only. The performance went over so well that Ella remained with the band. Soon the drummer recognized her commercial potential, and, starting in 1935, Ella began recording with Webb's Orchestra. By 1937 over half of the band's selections featured her voice. "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a huge hit in 1938 and "Undecided" soon followed. Ella's style during this time had not matured into her more well-known scat-singing, but instead was fairly straight forward and sing-songy, if not juvenile. On June 16, 1939 Chick Webb died suddenly of tuberculosis. Ella had developed into the band's figurehead, so she assumed nominal control over the orchestra, even though she had little to do with the repertoire or hiring or firing the musicians. The band continued to perform and record prolifically until 1941, when the band broke up due to WWII and the economic difficulties of maintaining a top-notch big band that affected the entire music industry. Ella teamed with the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys for some best-sellers over the next few years.
Ella toured with Dizzy Gillespie's big band, and recorded scat-bop versions of jazz standards such as "Lady Be Good," "How High the Moon" and "Flying Home" during 1945-47. Although most bebop musicians remained critically acclaimed but unpopular, Ella's popularity grew, and her stature as a major jazz singer rose as a result. Ella married Ray Brown, a phenomenal jazz bassist, in 1948
and used Brown's jazz trio as back-up for her singing until their divorce in
1952. After appearing in the film "Pete Kelly's Blues in 1955, Ella
signed with Granz's Verve label. Over the next few years she recorded her
legendary "Songbook" series of the music of Cole Porter, Gershwin,
Rogers and Hart, Duke Ellington, Harold Allen, Jerome Kern and Johnny
Mercer. Ella's Capitol and Reprise recordings of 1967-70 are not on the same level as she attempted to "update" her singing by including pop songs such as "Sunny" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," sounding quite silly in the process. But Granz again came to Ella's rescue after he created his new "Pablo" label. Starting with a Santa Monica Civic concert in 1972 that is climaxed by Ella's incredible version of "C Jam Blues" (in which she trades off with and "battles" five classic jazzmen), Ella was showcased in jazz settings throughout the 1970s with the likes of Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, and Joe Pass among others. Her voice began to fade during this era and by the 1980s her decline due to age was quite noticeable. Troubles with her eyes and heart knocked her out of action for periods of time although her increasingly rare appearances found Ella still retaining her sense of swing and joyful style. Ella retired for good in 1994 and passed away in 1996. Ella's significance to Lindy HopElla Fitzgerald's career began and developed with Swing music and dancing. She started off as a dancer, and then performed for dancers in the legendary Savoy Ballroom in Harlem for years with Chick Webb and Chick Webb's post-mortem band. With that background, it is not surprising that she always understood and appreciated the rhythmic nature of Swing music. When she got in a groove, few could rival the way her voice "swings" with the music. She fed off the rhythm more than most other famous jazz singers, who tended to sing on top of, or even oblivious to, the rhythm. The rhythmic nature of her singing is not lost on Lindy Hoppers. Ella also had an indirect affect on the modern evolution of dancing, stemming from her innovations in music, itself. Although louis Armstrong is credited with "inventing" scat singing, Ella developed scat singing into an art of its own: where a singer sings nonsense vocal tones, using his or her voice improvisationally as a musical instrument instead of a speaking device. Like a musical soloist, she would start by essentially scatting the melody, then slowly deviate from it improvisationally into a free-form scat much like an instrumental solo. Just like a good jazz instrumental soloist can do, vocal scatting can change the tenor of a tired old melody and breathe new life into it. Scat has been used in recent years as a tool to teach dancers how to improvise musically in their dancing by taking the very same move (the very same melody) and tweaking it a bit to create a different physical/rhythmic/musical "point." Just as a scat singer can deviate from the melody in subtle ways that remain true to the structure of the song, gaining inspiration from the other musicians as she does so, so can a dancer create new rhythmic twists in a song, inspired by the flow of the music and the feedback from his or her dance partner. Although most of the evolution of scat singing in music evolved after Lindy Hop had faded into virtual obscurity, Lindy Hoppers have taken tremendous inspiration from it since Lindy Hop re-emerged. Nonetheless, Ella was a tremendously prolific singer who recorded plenty of non-danceable Broadway-musical music, bebop, pop or even soul music. However, she also recorded Swing music that fits almost any Lindy Hop taste: from her early Swing Era Harlem-swing music with Chick Webb's Orchestra to her grooving, funky small-band Swing material of later years to her pseudo-soul music that "Westies" enjoy. Although she played for dancers more in the beginning of her career than at other times, she played for dancers throughout her career Copyright (C) 2002 Austin Lindy Hop & Lawrence Page |
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Ella Fitzgerald was perhaps the finest jazz singer, ever, with perhaps
only Billie Holliday rivaling her mix of popularity, historical significance,
influence, and sheer talent. Indeed, the best jazz singers are still in
some sense "supposed" to be female in large part because of the role
model she and Billie Holliday set and the legends they left behind.
Ella's vocal quality combined with
her ability to "phrase" her lyrics was unrivaled. Blessed with a
beautiful voice and a wide range, Ella was also a brilliant scat singer and had
near-perfect elocution. Some have criticized her "cheeriness,"
stemming from the fact that she always sounded so happy to be singing. But
these criticisms overlook a tremendous wealth of moving and sorrowful ballads, which she
sang with honest and unforced emotion, in an age where the depth of love in a
song was not measured by the sheer volume of a singer's vocal misery. Her
simplicity, vocal honesty, clarity, and improvisational skills made her, not
only one of the greatest singers, but one of the greatest jazz musicians ever,
even though her "instrument" was nothing but her own voice.
In 1946, Ella began her most significant professional relationship with manager
Norman Granz, beginning with her engagement with Granz's "Jazz at the
Philharmonic." Although Chick Webb gave Ella her first big break, her
relationship with Granz provided Ella with her greatest opportunities, as well
as her greatest critical and popular successes of her career. Ella began
to mature and develop her singing style in the following years, adopting a more
boppish, musical, and improvisational style of singing. In a very real
sense, her singing and developing image reflected her own maturity from a
happy-go-lucky girl to a full-blossomed woman. 
Although
not her most critically acclaimed work, her straight-forward singing on these
albums appealed to the masses, and helped cement her role as "the First
Lady of Song." Her clarity and intonation were absolutely
perfect. Despite the tremendous experience and musical knowledge that went
into each song, the effortlessness with which she would sing enhanced its simple
yet profound beauty. She reached perhaps the peak of her abilities around
1960. Her famous live version of "Mack the Knife" (in
which she forgot the words and made up her own) from "Ella In Berlin"
is a classic, perhaps played more often at Lindy Hop dances today than any
version with the correct words.