Ella Fitzgerald sings on at 100, thanks to Grammy exhibit

The Grammy Museum recently put rare Ella Fitzgerald memorabilia on display for what would have been the singing legend’s 100th birthday.

The museum’s “Ella at 100: Celebrating the Artistry of Ella Fitzgerald” exhibition includes the first Grammy Award that Fitzgerald won — the first awarded to an African-American woman — as well as some of her gowns, sheet music and personal telegrams.

Fitzgerald, who was born April 25, 1917, died in 1996 at 79 from complications with diabetes and left few possessions beyond personal notes, but the exhibit puts a focus on what made Fitzgerald a star — her voice.

Grammy Museum curator Nwaka Onwusa says she wants visitors to be captivated by her singing, so the exhibit includes video and audio of her early performances with jazz greats Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

The exhibit was one of several celebrations of Fitzgerald’s birthday. New York City declared April 25 Ella Fitzgerald Day and the Smithsonian has also opened a special exhibit, while Starbucks stores in the United States played her music.

“Ella Fitzgerald’s is probably the single most important voice in American history,” recording artist Miles Mosley said. “If you’re going to start with any song before 1970, her version is the one you start from. That’s the ground floor. That is the most representative version of what the composer themselves wished their songs would sound like.”

Over the course of her career, Fitzgerald sang swing, bebop, pop and jazz. Among her best-known works are a 1938 novelty smash, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which she co-wrote, and a series of eight album sets, each dedicated to an American songwriter or songwriting team.

In addition to being bestsellers, those albums helped establish the long-play record as a platform for deeper, more serious musical exploration.

Twenty-plus years after Fitzgerald’s death, the rave reviews keep pouring in.

Hard to put together

Onwusa said Fitzgerald’s exhibit was not an easy display to put together, noting that the relatively new Grammy Museum, which opened in 2008, could not compete with the long-established Smithsonian and Library of Congress, which have long been collecting Fitzgerald memorabilia.

But the Los Angeles-based Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation and Fitzgerald estate came through with enough items to make for an attraction, including gowns Fitzgerald wore in performance, rare photographs, sheet music, newspaper articles and concert programs.

Securing performance footage proved more challenging, but was critical, Onwusa said.

“When you come to ‘Ella at 100,’ immediately we want visitors to be captivated by her voice,” she explained. “That’s what draws you to Ella.”

To that end, there are viewing and listening stations, where exhibit visitors can watch and hear Fitzgerald performing at various points in her career. She performed for some 65 years, going into semi-retirement in 1994, after having both legs amputated below the knee due to diabetes.

For those just being introduced to Fitzgerald, Verve/UMe has just released a career-spanning primer, the four-CD set “100 Songs for a Centennial.” For hardcore fans, there’s the lavish vinyl six-album limited-edition “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Books,” which is newly packaged with lithographs, a book and a bonus track.

Numerous other releases and events are planned throughout the year.

But once the celebration ends, it’s fairly clear that the Fitzgerald legacy will continue.

Grammy Museum executive director Scott Goldman singled out a relative newcomer such as Andra Day as a perfect example

“[Here’s] a young African-American artist who is blurring the lines between jazz and soul and R&B.” he noted. “If you listen to Andra Day, you’ll hear a little Ella Fitzgerald. And I think many artists carry that. I think that’s what makes Ella Fitzgerald so special. She lives.”

The exhibit runs through Sept. 10. For more information, visit www.grammymuseum.org.

This story was originally published May 1, 2017 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Ella Fitzgerald sings on at 100, thanks to Grammy exhibit."