ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180063
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
To Bing Crosby, she was "the greatest;" to Frank Sinatra, "my all-time favorite."
Her recordings, says Tony Bennett, "will live forever." For 18 years in a row, Downbeat magazine readers rated this Virginia native (born in Newport News) the best female jazz singer.
To such accolades, what could we possibly add?
Only our appreciation for a gentle life given to the making of beautiful music - and for the audio technology that has saved Ella Fitzgerald's contribution to America's pre-eminent native art form.
A singer's singer, Fitzgerald was able to stretch the range of her voice while sustaining a rare sweetness of tone.
She wielded her voice like a jazz instrument, swooping and syncopating with seeming effortlessness. She was an awesome "scat" singer, building on Louis Armstrong's innovation of using nonsense syllables to improvise like a horn player.
But she also had superb diction, delivering lyrical nuances and subtle phrasing with an astonishing purity and clarity, especially in the great standards she specialized in recording.
Her big-band days with Chick Webb established her reputation. Fitzgerald's 1938 song, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," which she co-wrote, introduced her playful style to a national pop audience.
But her greatest and most enduring achievements are her recordings of American songwriters' songbooks. Never before or since have the works of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington been sung with such consistent, life-affirming verve.
A lot of Americans underappreciate the artistry and significance of jazz as a distinctively American creation - but few could listen to any of Fitzgerald's recordings without feeling the joy she ebulliently conveyed in her song.
Never haughty or self-absorbed, she was a jewel of American arts; no other country could have produced her. Because her music survives her, we can still get a kick out of listening.
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB