Ella Fitzgerald is a legendary vocalist who was known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella" for her three-octave vocal range. Her natural tone, diction, intonation, harmonic sensibility and her ability to improvise scat singing made her an indispensable talent in music. Fitzgerald's career debuted in 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York, where she brought in weekly audiences and won one of the theater's first amateur nights. She began singing with Chick Webb's orchestra, recording several hits with the ensemble and eventually taking over as bandleader after Webb's death. She left the band in 1942 and signed with the Decca label while swing was in decline, so Fitzgerald developed a new vocal style and began scat singing to match the bebop trend that was taking form. With the production help of her long time manager of Norman Granz, she eventually broke away from the bebop scene with Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, released in 1956. Her interpretation of the Cole Porter songbook was the first of eight songbook sets she would release, and The Songbook Series went on to become her most critically and commercially successful work. Fitzgerald passed away from diabetes in 1996, but she is remembered and celebrated through her music and her unforgettably distinctive voice.
