Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz

Provides an insightful study of the dramatically successful musical career and turbulent private life of jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, in a portrait that reveals how the singer transcended racial and sexual prejudice and includes a complete discography.

For his exhaustive biography, Nicholson ( Jazz: The Modern Resurgence ) draws on written accounts of the legendary singer and on interviews with her childhood friends and musicians who have worked with her; he was unable to arrange to talk with Fitzgerald herself. The result is a thorough, dispassionate account of a career that began in 1935 when, at age 17, the singer first appeared in New York City's Apollo Theater and the Harlem Opera House. Nicholson shows how Fitzgerald was advanced by Milt Gabler at Decca and by promoter Norman Granz; he follows the grueling schedule to which she subjected herself and provides lucid analyses of her style and place in the history of jazz and 20th-century popular music. Although there are accounts here of her continuously unhappy love life, Fitzgerald's personality remains obscure, possibly a reflection of a performer to whom nothing other than singing seems to really matter. Discography by Phil Schaap. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The First Lady of Song is more than deserving of a full-length biography, and English musician-critic Nicholson (Jazz: The Modern Resurgence, not reviewed) is erudite and intelligent. But this book is too often a pedestrian catalogue of dates, places, and band personnel. Perhaps the problem is, as one of his sources says, ``There's no scandal about Ella.... And that doesn't make for exciting journalism.'' As is the case for many key figures in jazz, Ella Fitzgerald's public persona is a m‚lange of fact and fancy, legend and reality. This book, which corrects and updates a slightly earlier European edition, blows away some of the mist. Among other minor revelations Nicholson provides is the news that Ella was born out of wedlock in 1917, a year earlier than previously thought; that she had a disastrous first marriage in the mid-1930s to a smooth-talking ex-con that was annulled, and that she had affairs with several younger men during the '60s. Much more compelling is the rags-to-riches story of a young black girl, orphaned in her early teens, who rose to become one of the great artists of jazz, who has garnered countless awards, international fame, and adulation. The best passages are those that analyze Fitzgerald's unique singing style. He brings a musician's insight to these sections and even the die-hard Fitzgerald fan will learn something new from them. The book also includes an exhaustive discography by jazz historian Phil Schaap, which makes it a valuable addition to the jazz bookshelf. When he isn't writing about the music itself, Nicholson's prose lies limply on the page. But his musical analyses enliven his language, and his treatment of his subject's human and musical strengths and weaknesses is well balanced. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ella Fitzgerald's hit song "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" grabbed national attention in 1938, and over the next three decades she won much popular and critical acclaim. Born in poverty, she rose to perform at Carnegie Hall, becoming wealthy and well liked. Nicholson discusses Fitzgerald's musical influences, places her in the context of swing and bebop, and discusses her career highlights, including the Songbook albums. But he also bemoans the many silly songs she recorded to achieve wide sales and discusses her lack of depth compared with Billie Holiday. A 61-page discography by jazz historian Phil Schaap is said to include previously unknown recordings. Although this biography joins at least four others (some in German), it seems well researched and is recommended for general collections.
Paul Baker, Wisconson Ctr. for Education Research, Madison
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most of the great jazz and popular singers have been able to invest the songs they sing with an autobiographical subtext. Billie Holiday did it; so did Frank Sinatra and many others. But not Ella Fitzgerald. As British critic Nicholson explains it in this engaging biography, "you got a package deal of subjectivity and song with Holiday or Sinatra. With Ella you got only the song." This sounds like criticism, and in a way it is, but Nicholson makes us understand Ella's emotional distance from her material in terms of both her technical mastery and her acute embarrassment about her past--when discovered by Chick Webb in the 1930s, she was literally living on the streets of New York. Ella didn't want to tell a story with her songs; she wanted to swing, and that she did through more than 50 years of recording and performing. Nicholson ably chronicles it all--offering interesting reassessments of the lightly regarded Milt Gabler period with Decca records and the more-celebrated Norman Granz years with Verve and Pablo. This is a well-researched, gracefully written biography, stronger on musical analysis than on psychological insight--just as Ella would want it. Bill Ott