Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald endured a turbulent adolescence, including time in a reform institution, before entering — almost on a dare — a talent contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater in 1934. Her performance led to a place with Chick Webb's orchestra, and after Webb's death in 1939 she took over leadership of the band herself, a rare position of authority for a young Black woman in the era.

Fitzgerald's technical command of her voice was extraordinary: pure tone, flawless diction and an improvisational, horn-like scat singing style that let her trade melodic lines with the era's greatest instrumentalists as an equal. Her recording of the nursery rhyme 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket' became a surprise national hit and launched her to fame.

Under producer Norman Granz, Fitzgerald recorded the celebrated Songbook series through the 1950s and 60s, definitive interpretations of the Great American Songbook by composers including Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington, that helped establish those songs as a canon in their own right.

Over a six-decade career she won 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and became known universally as the 'First Lady of Song' — an artist whose vocal artistry shaped the entire vocabulary of American popular and jazz singing.