Welcome to Afterglow [a show of vocal jazz and popular song from the Great American Songbook], I’m your host, Mark Chilla.

This week, I’ll be celebrating the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, with a close look at the singer’s early career. Starting in 1935, Fitzgerald began her recording career with Decca records. And over the next 20 years, she matured from a big band vocalist in Chick Webb’s Orchestra, to one of the most acclaimed jazz singers—and greatest scat singers—in the world. We’ll highlight this evolution in the next hour

It’s Ella on Decca, coming up next on Afterglow

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD - MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY (1939)

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD - MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY (1954)

What a difference 15 years makes. First, we heard Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb’s Orchestra in 1939, then again with pianist Ellis Larkins in 1954, performing the Cole Porter tune “My Heart Belongs To Daddy,” (both for Decca Records)

MUSIC CLIP - ELLA FITZGERALD, “FLYING HOME”

Mark Chilla here on Afterglow. On this show, we’re exploring the first 20 years of the career of arguably the finest jazz singer that ever lived, Ella Fitzgerald, and the recordings she made for Decca Records.

Ella Fitzgerald grew up poor in Yonkers, New York  in the 1920s, and she showed an affinity for singing early on, being able to imitate the songs of Louis Armstrong or Connee Boswell that she heard on the radio. However, Ella’s first love was not singing, but dancing, and it was dancing that led her to her first big break. 

In 1934, when Ella was 17 years old—broke with barely any clean clothes—she tried her luck at Amateur Night at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, wanting to compete as a dancer. However, she saw there was a much better dance group already competing that evening, so at the last moment, she decided to sing. She did her best Connee Boswell impression, and won over the crowd. And just like that, seemingly out of nowhere, she became an overnight sensation in Harlem. 

Within months, she was hired by drummer Chick Webb, who at the time had one of the leading orchestras in Harlem. Webb was hoping his orchestra would break out onto the national stage. With Ella’s help, they eventually would.

In June of 1935, Ella went into the studio with Webb, and recorded her first record for the newly formed Decca label. Her voice was thin and juvenile, but even this young, she had a remarkable sense of pitch and even better sense of rhythm and swing. By the end of 1936, she began to exhibit her skills as a true musician, and not just the band’s “girl singer,” by improvising and scat singing. Here are two songs from Ella’s first year, beginning with her first record. This is Ella Fitzgerald with “I’ll Chase The Blues Away,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “I’LL CHASE THE BLUES AWAY”

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “YOU’LL HAVE TO SWING IT MR. PAGANINI”

Two recordings of Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb’s Orchestra from 1936. We just heard her with a little bit of scat singing on “You’ll Have To Swing It (Mr. Paganini).” She would record that song again with considerably more scat singing with Sy Oliver in 1952, and it later became a staple of her live sets. Before that, her very first record “I’ll Chase The Blues Away.”

Ella Fitzgerald’s star-making turn came in 1938, on a tune that she had a hand in writing. It was her idea to turn the old nursery rhyme “A Tisket, A Tasket” into a swing tune, and she did so with the help of the band’s arranger Van Alexander. With Ella’s girlish voice and childlike joy, the tune became Chick Webb’s first national hit, and turned Ella Fitzgerald into a household name. It also inspired other artists like Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong to go down the nursery rhyme route. As Lena Horne once put it, everyone went looking for that yellow basket.

Here’s Ella Fitzgerald and the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1938 with “A Tisket A Tasket,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “A TISKET A TASKET”

Ella Fitzgerald and the Chick Webb Orchestra with their first big hit “A Tisket A Tasket,” based on the old nursery rhyme.

While this song marked the beginning of Ella Fitzgerald’s fame, it sadly marked the end of Chick Webb’s. Webb suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, which not only stunted his growth, but also shortened his life. He died in 1939 at age 34, and Fitzgerald—his protege, sang at the funeral. 

Decca Records decided to keep Webb’s orchestra—then one of their biggest hitmakers—intact. But they decided to make the orchestra’s biggest star, Ella Fitzgerald, the de facto leader. Less than a month after Webb’s death, the now newly rechristened “Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra” were back in the recording studio, and cutting her next big hit “Stairway to the Stars.”

Over the next 2 years, Ella would continue to record with the band, maintaining her impeccable sense of rhythm and pitch, all the while learning more about the art of singing. Her voice moved out of her throat and into her diaphragm, and matured into a much richer instrument by 1941. She also began to try her hand at more well-crafted songs. 

Let’s listen to Ella’s evolution from 1939 to 1941. First up, this is Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra in 1939 with “Stairway to the Stars,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “STAIRWAY TO THE STARS”

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “I GOT IT BAD AND THAT AIN’T GOOD”

Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra in 1941 with Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good). Before that, we heard them two years earlier (although sounding decades younger) with “Stairway To The Stars.” 

In 1941, Decca president Milt Gabler made the decision to disband Ella Fitzgerald’s Famous Orchestra to try to sell her as a solo artist. The War Years for Ella in the mid 1940s were not especially fruitful. There were some attempts to sell her commercially by pairing her up with artists like her former bandmate and R&B star Louis Jordan or the vocal The Ink Spots, although it was clear that she was lightyears ahead of them musically. There were also other attempts to let her thrive artistically, by allowing her to record more straight-ahead jazz numbers and do more scat singing. Let’s hear a little of each right now.

First, here’s Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots in 1943 with their hit record “Cow Cow Boogie,” on Afterglow

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD AND THE INK SPOTS, “COW COW BOOGIE”

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “FLYING HOME”

Ella Fitzgerald in 1945 with one of her flights of fancy. That was her scatting her way through the Benny Goodman jazz tune “Flying Home.” Before that we heard Ella and the vocal group the Ink Spots in 1943 with “Cow Cow Boogie.” Both tunes were recorded for the Decca Label.

MUSIC CLIP - BENNY GOODMAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA,” FLYING HOME”

We’ll hear more of Ella’s Decca recordings after a short break. Stay with us.

I’m Mark Chilla, and you’re listening to Afterglow

MUSIC CLIP - TOMMY FLANAGAN TRIO, “HOW HIGH THE MOON”

MUSIC CLIP - TOMMY FLANAGAN TRIO, “OH, LADY BE GOOD!”

Welcome back to Afterglow, I’m Mark Chilla. We’ve been looking at the early career of Ella Fitzgerald this hour. 

Where we left off, the year was 1945 and she was just beginning to show off her jazz chops for Decca Records, distinguishing herself as the greatest jazz singer of her generation, and someone who could probably scat better than many trumpeters could solo.

The next tune I want to play for you comes from 1947, and I can say without hyperbole that it’s simply one of the best three minutes of recorded music in the 20th century. Ella Fitzgerald had been working on a scat solo to the Gershwin tune “Oh, Lady Be Good” in the club circuit. One night, Milt Gabler, the head of Decca Records heard her perform it, and knew that he had to record. It wasn’t a record intended to sell any copies, but instead, it was there to showcase that Ella could rank herself among the emerging class of bebop musicians.

When they went into the studio on March 19th, 1947, Ella had the whole arrangement already in her head, each melody and each phrase more tuneful than the last. Amazingly, she recorded it in one take, and it remains one of the most iconic jazz solos of all time. It’s one of the few vocal scat solos that’s been imitated by instrumentalists, rather than the other way around. 

Here’s Ella Fitzgerald in 1947 with iconic recording of “Oh, Lady Be Good,” on Afterglow

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “OH, LADY BE GOOD”

Ella Fitzgerald with her remarkable 1947 recording for Decca records of Gershwin’s “Oh, Lady Be Good.” She would return to this arrangement many times over the course of her concert career. 

The early 1950s saw the introduction of the new long-playing record, and Decca was quick to bring Ella Fitzgerald onto the new medium. Her first 10” LP marked a turning point for the singer. Ella Sings Gershwin was more of a ballad album than a pop or jazz album, and showcased the singer trying her hand at a more subtle approach to song, accompanied only by pianist Ellis Larkins. It also showcases Ella for the first time tackling the songbook of a single composer, something that she became known for in the second half of her career singing for the Verve label.

Here now are two songs from Fitzgerald’s 1950 album Ella Sings Gershwin. First, this is Ella Fitzgerald with “Someone To Watch Over Me,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME”

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “BUT NOT FOR ME”

Ella Fitzgerald and pianist Ellis Larkins in 1950 from her first long-playing record called Ella Sings Gershwin. That was “Someone To Watch Over Me” and “But Not For Me.”

In 1954, Decca records tried to get lightning to strike twice and brought Ella back into the studio with pianist Ellis Larkins to record 10 more songs together as a duet. The album Songs In A Mellow Mood is a lot like Ella Sings Gershwin, with a few more uptempo numbers. Both musicians have an excellent sense of time, and they remain some of the finest intimate recordings of her career. Here’s a selection from that latter album, another Gershwin tune. 

This is Ella Fitzgerald with “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT”

Ella Fitzgerald and pianist Ellis Larkins with Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” from the 1954 Decca record Songs In A Mellow Mood.

Songs In A Mellow Mood would end up being one of the last things she recorded for the Decca label. The reason has to do with a person she met about five years earlier by the name of Norman Granz. Granz was a concert promoter, who in the 1940s, began to organize a series of concerts out in Los Angeles called Jazz At The Philharmonic, featuring some of the best jazz musicians like Nat King Cole, Benny Carter, and Charlie Parker.

The Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts eventually hit the road, both nationally and internationally, and the live recordings of these concerts gave people all over the world a sense of what the best players sounded like live. Granz had an ear for talent, and he knew that he wanted Ella to perform in his concert series, despite her contract with Decca. In 1949, he managed to snag her for a Carnegie Hall concert, and she continued to tour with Granz for the next five years, delighting audiences with her vocal feats and her winning personality.

In 1955, Granz had the idea to start his own jazz record label, and Ella Fitzgerald was the centerpiece behind this idea. He struggled for months to free Ella from her contract with Decca. Once he did, Verve Records was created, and Ella Fitzgerald began working on a series of songbook albums, which would become among the most celebrated albums of her career.

To close off this hour, I’ll play for you two songs from Ella’s 1953 Jazz At The Philharmonic concert in Tokyo, Japan, where she treats the audience first to a ballad and then to a swinging scat number that became the theme song to Jazz At The Philharmonic, the tune “How High The Moon.” 

First, here’s Ella live with “Body and Soul,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “BODY AND SOUL”

MUSIC - ELLA FITZGERALD, “HOW HIGH THE MOON”

“How High The Moon” and “Body And Soul” sung by Ella Fitzgerald live in Tokyo in 1953, part of the Jazz At The Philharmonic Series. And thanks for exploring the early years of Ella Fitzgerald on this edition on Afterglow.

MUSIC CLIP - ELLA FITZGERALD, “ELLA HUMS THE BLUES”

Afterglow is part of the educational mission of Indiana University, and produced by WFIU Public Radio in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. The executive producer is John Bailey.

Playlists for this and other Afterglow programs are available on our website. That’s at indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow.

I’m Mark Chilla, inviting you to tune in next week for our mix of Vocal Jazz and popular song from the Great American Songbook, here on Afterglow