A landmark biography that reclaims Ella Fitzgerald as a major American artist and modernist innovator.

Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) possessed one of the twentieth century’s most astonishing voices. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald’s death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist.

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer’s difficult childhood in Yonkers, New York, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls’ reformatory school—where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer. Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald’s tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury.

Tick’s compelling narrative depicts Fitzgerald’s complicated career in fresh and original detail, upending the traditional view that segregates vocal jazz from the genre’s mainstream. As she navigated the shifting tides between jazz and pop, she used her originality to pioneer modernist vocal jazz. Interpreting long-lost setlists, reviews from both white and Black newspapers, and newly released footage and recordings, the book explores how Ella’s transcendence as an improvisor produced onstage performances every bit as significant as her historic recorded oeuvre.

From the singer’s first performance at the Apollo Theatre’s famous “Amateur Night” to the Savoy Ballroom, where Fitzgerald broke through with Chick Webb’s big band in the 1930s, Tick evokes the jazz world in riveting detail. She describes how Ella helped shape the bebop movement in the 1940s, as she joined Dizzy Gillespie and her then-husband, Ray Brown, in the world-touring Jazz at the Philharmonic, one of the first moments of high-culture acceptance for the disreputable art form.

Breaking ground as a female bandleader, Fitzgerald refuted expectations of musical Blackness, deftly balancing artistic ambition and market expectations. Her legendary exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s fused a Black vocal aesthetic and jazz improvisation to revolutionize the popular repertoire. This hybridity often confounded critics, yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ella reached audiences around the world, electrifying concert halls, and sold millions of records.

A masterful biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald describes a powerful woman who set a standard for American excellence nearly unmatched in the twentieth century.

About the Author: Judith Tick is professor emerita of music history at Northeastern University. She has published award-winning books and articles about American music and women's history in music, including Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music.

My Take
Publishing December 5, 2023, this book is an introduction to Ella Fitzgerald. If you are unfamiliar with her beyond her recordings, this is a good introduction. Having said that, the strength of this book is that it read like a literature review: lots of historical texts are presented and lightly analyzed. I would recommend this book if you are doing research on Ella Fitzgerald for its bibliography.

I will be providing a review of this work to The Arts Fuse in the coming days. This was a magnificent read with a lot of new information about one of the greatest voices of the 20th century.

This is a thoroughly researched and well-written biography of Ella Fitzgerald. The focus is clearly on the music as the author chronicles the musicians and songs for each recording session, concert tour, and television appearance. The in depth research includes contemporary reviews of concerts and recordings, including from previously low circulation African American publications. A secondary focus of the book is the racial, gender, and genre discrimination that Ella Fitzgerald faced as a black female jazz singer. Although the amount of detail made it a somewhat dry at times, the information was so interesting and fascinating that it didn't detract from my enjoyment . Highly recommended

I received a free copy of, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald, by Judith Tick, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Ella Fitzgerald is a music pioneer, her amazing voice, is one a kind. What an amazing life she led, the places he played, the people she met, she did not have it easy though with health scares and quite a few surgeries needed. This is a long book but packed full of wonderful information on Ella Fitzgerald.

Thank you, W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley, for this eARC. "Becoming Ella Fitzgerald" was beautifully written and captured the essence of Fitzgerald's life and career. When singing jazz, Ella Fitzgerald learned to navigate between two worlds (Black and White). Fitzgerald fared far better in the European markets, selling out shows than in the United States due to racism. However, she still held popularity among the African-American community. Fitzgerald has remained in the music industry for over six decades due to the changing musical styles of singers.

I would rate this book 9/10. It is a remarkable compilation of Ella's life and significant historical moments. The author, Judith Tick, presents the story in a historical context that is comprehensible to readers and is particularly appealing to those who have not heard of Ella Fitzgerald and other notable singers such as Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and Dizzy Gillespie.