Ella Jane Fitzgerald, also known as "Lady Ella" and the "First Lady of Song", is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century.

With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered to have been one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook.

Over a recording career that lasted 57 years, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards, and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, with Tempie's boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva.

Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. As a child, Fitzgerald was placed in the Coloured Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx.

She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous "Amateur Nights."

She had originally intended to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead, in the style of Connie Boswell. She sang Hoagy Carmichael's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection", a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of US$25.00.

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb here for the first time. Webb had already hired singer Charlie Linton to work with the band, and was, The New York Times later wrote, "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a diamond in the rough."

Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University. Despite the rough crowd, she was a great success, and Webb hired her to travel with the band for $12.50 a week.

She began singing regularly with Webb's Orchestra through 1935, at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs with them, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)" but it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.

Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" with Ella taking the role of bandleader. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 sides during her time with the orchestra, most of which, like "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", were "novelties and disposable pop fluff."

In 1942, Fitzgerald left the band to begin a solo career. Now signed to the Decca label, she had several popular hits, while recording with such artists as the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys.

With Decca's Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz, and appearing regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. Fitzgerald's relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels.

With the demise of the Swing era, and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop caused a major change in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band.

It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."

Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" would later be described by The New York Times as "one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade....Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had tried similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the technique with such dazzling inventiveness." Her be-bop recordings of "Oh, Lady be Good!" (1947) and "How High the Moon" were similarly popular, and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.

Perhaps responding to criticism, and under pressure from Granz (who felt that Fitzgerald was given unsuitable material to record during this period), her last years on the Decca label saw Fitzgerald recording a series of duets with pianist Ellis Larkins, released in 1950 as Ella Sings Gershwin.