Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Films
Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things (2020)
She wore a dirty dress and workman’s boots to her debut. Ella Fitzgerald’s first performances as a vocalist occurred at the Apollo Theater’s amateur night in November 1934. The Harlem house was crowded and one girl in the audience, Norma Miller, remembers that her rowdy teenage friends laughed and booed. A year later, Fitzgerald was singing with one of Harlem’s top bands, the Chick Webb Orchestra. Her star rose quickly and kept climbing.
Miller, later a professional dancer, is among the cast of friends, family and jazz critics seen in director Leslie Woodhead’s documentary, Ella: Just One of Those Things. Elegantly composed from interviews, archival footage and still photographs, Ella tells the gratifying story of the homeless 16-year old in a dirty dress who became one of the world’s most recognized names in jazz—even among people who never listened to her music.
The narrative in words and pictures manages to encompass a wide stretch of African American history as well as the musical and personal trajectory of its subject. Fitzgerald was two when her mother brought her from Virginia to Yonkers, a subway ride away from what one newsreel (excerpted in Ella) hyperbolically called “the largest colored city in the world.” Harlem wasn’t the largest but became, in the 1920s, the center of black culture in America and a beacon to the world.
Fitzgerald was all ears with a natural talent honed by experience. She came of age in the swing era and marched in the hit parade. When her big band was drafted during World War II, she gravitated to the new small combo sound of bebop. Capable of dispensing with words, Fitzgerald took off on tearaway solos, quoting half a dozen melodies within the span of a few minutes. She kept pace with the bop trumpeters and saxophonists for speed and agility—maybe even outpaced them.
The Fitzgerald recognized by the wider, non-musical public was associated with her post-1950s career on concert stages singing from the Great American Songbook. She could bat words around like the ball in an especially vigorous tennis match but could also draw deep meaning from the lyrics of romantic ballads. And this may surprise many viewers: footage of Fitzgerald getting funky, soaring above the syncopation in a live rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” that reached the satellite years ahead of Apollo 11.
Ella: Just One of Those Things is being released virtually on Friday, June 26 through a network of movie theaters including Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre.
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