The title of “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald,” Judith Tick’s incisive, doggedly researched new biography of the 20th century’s preeminent songstress, suggests action and movement. This is no accident. As ...

In his 859-page monograph The Swing Era (1989), composer and historian Gunther Schuller skipped past Ella Fitzgerald. In 2011, when Judith Tick asked him about the omission, he responded that "there ...

Tick (Ruth Crawford Seeger), a professor emerita of music history at Northeastern University, delivers a magisterial biography of singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), who “fearlessly explored ...

Editor’s note: This segment originally broadcast on March 17, 2023. How did Ella Fitzgerald become the legend she was? That’s the question author Judith Tick asks and answers in her new biography on ...

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song. By Judith Tick. W.W. Norton & Company; 592 pages; $40 and £30 But, as a new biography makes clear, for a long time this ...

In early 1933, a 15-year-old Ella Fitzgerald spent many a day dancing for dimes and nickels on the sidewalks of Yonkers, N.Y. At least she did until a truant officer caught her and hauled her to ...

All About Jazz is celebrating Ella Fitzgerald's birthday today! Dubbed “The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a ...

Freda Payne’s name is forever associated with her 1970 classic hit song, ”Band of Gold.” But Payne says she was “bred as a jazz singer” and that’s why playing jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald felt natural to ...

Remember Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie in the classic 1992 Disney animated version of “Aladdin”? There’s one line — possibly improvised by the actor — that has the Genie explaining how the ...

Explore the catalog of “The First Lady of Song” with tracks chosen by Valerie June, Yaya Bey, Imani Perry and 13 more writers and musicians. By Marcus J. Moore Caity Weaver’s 10-hour holiday music ...