Much like the “King,” Elvis Presley, played an enormous role in introducing black music to white Americans in the 1950s, Ella Fitzgerald, “The First Lady of Song,” can be said to have brought white music to black Americans.

Though known as a versatile and brilliant jazz, scat and be-bop singer in the 40s, from 1956 Ella devoted most of the next decade to recording “Song Books” of great American (largely from Jewish immigrant families) composers: Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern. This series also included the songs of white Southener and hit songwriter Johnny Mercer, as well as the music of the legendary Duke Ellington.

A case can be made that Ella Fitzgerald, like Elvis Presley, helped to desegregate America in the 1950s, bringing the music of white composers and performers from Broadway and Hollywood musicals into the black musical vernacular. Black jazz greats such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane who were born and raised in a segregated America went on to make classics and “standards” out of the songs of white composers, thanks in part to Ella’s tribute “Song Book” series.

Ella also helped to break the Hollywood color barrier — with the aid of Hollywood starlet and Fitzgerald fan Marilyn Monroe. In 1955, Ella was the first black performer to ever appear at West Hollywood’s famous Mocambo nightclub. (Playwrite Bonnie Greer made this event the subject of her 2006 musical/drama, Ella, Meet Marilyn.)

“‘I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt,’ Ella later said. ‘It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the ’50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard… After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.'” —EllaFitzgerald.com

Ella Fitzgerald, born Ella Jane Fitzgerald in Virginia in 1917, got her start in show business at Harlem’s renowned Apollo Theater.

“Ella’s name [was] pulled in a weekly drawing at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous ‘Amateur Nights.’ She had originally intended to go on stage and dance, but intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing in the style of her idol, Connie Boswell. She sang Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Judy’, and ‘The Object of My Affections,’ another song by the Boswell Sisters, that night.” —Wikipedia

Ella became a household name in 1938 with her release of a jazzed-up version of the nursery rhyme, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.”

Through a long career which endeared her to millions of fans worldwide, Ella Fitzgerald earned many awards, including:

• 13 Grammy awards
• “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame
• Kennedy Center for Performing Arts’ Medal of Honor Award
• National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ Lifetime Achievement Award
• Pied Piper Award
• American Society of Composers
• Women at Work organization’s Bicentennial Woman
• Authors and Publishers’ highest honor
• George And Ira Gershwin Award for Outstanding Achievement
• National Medal of Art
• Honorary chairmanship of the Martin Luther King Foundation
• Received first ASCAP award in recognition of an artist
• Honorary doctorate degrees from Dartmouth, Talladega, Howard and Yale Universities
• Peabody Award for Outstanding Contributions in Music
• The first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named “Ella” in her honor
• NAACP Award for lifetime achievement

In her later years, Ella was stricken with diabetes and in 1993, her legs were amputated as a result of the disease. She died in Beverly Hills in June, 1996, at the age of 78.

In January 2006, Ms. Fitzgerald was bestowed yet another honor: The U.S. Postal Service released a 39-cent stamp bearing her image as part of the USPS “Black Heritage” stamp series. The release was announced at ceremonies at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on January 10th. The commemorative stamp was subsequently made available at postal centers around the nation.

A-Tisket, A-Tasket Lyrics

(Words Traditional Nursery Rhyme, Music by Van Alexander and Ella Fitzgerald)

A-tisket, a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way I lost it
I lost it, I lost it
On the way I lost it
A little girl picked it up
And put it in her pocket