Book summary

Beginning in the late 1930s, Ella Fitzgerald's long career spanned much of 20th-century jazz history, starting with her recording debut with Chick Webb's orchestra and reaching its apex with a celebrated series of albums she made with most of the leading figures in jazz, from Duke Ellington to Louis Armstrong. After a poverty-stricken childhood in New York, Fitzgerald was discovered singing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem by Benny Carter, and started with Webb's band soon after (although her disheveled appearance--she was homeless at the time--nearly lost her the gig). Her subsequent rise to national prominence was not without misfortune: she experienced both sexual and racial prejudice, her marriage to bass player Ray Brown collapsed due to the pressure of both their careers, and she also suffered from chronic depression. ELLA FITZGERALD, Stuart Nicholson's insightful study of the career of the "First Lady of Jazz," ties the threads of her complex personal and public lives together in a skillful blend of revealing intimate details and authoritative career analysis, from the loneliness that accompanied her fame to her fortuitous association with the impresario Norman Granz, who successfully guided her career for half a century.

Media reviews

'Stuart Nicholson's exhaustively researched biography of the late Ella Fitzgerald...demystifies a life hitherto shrouded in speculation....Nicholson reveals a woman who only really came to life when she sang."