# The joy of Ella Fitzgerald’s accessible elegance: Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/09/06/the-joy-of-ella-fitzgeralds-accessible-elegance-videos/
- Published: 2019-09-06T16:31:29+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Nana had a big wooden box of a television in the corner of her apartment along
Van Aken Boulevard in Cleveland, Ohio, known as “the Widow’s Block.” **

Brick with plenty of sunlight, there were four or five buildings of 100 or so units
that housed most of our grandmothers after their husbands passed in the late ’60s,’
70s and even ’80s. Close to the places the elegant women knew – church, grocery,
movie theater, drug store, Chinese restaurant and confectionary – they played bridge,
hosted dinners and maintained their friendships.

But even with that, few things tickled Nana more than when Ella Fitzgerald appeared
on that chunky tube encased in heavy mahogany. With creamy perfection, the woman
known as “The First Lady of Song” would bop, scat and sing. Cole Porter, Duke Ellington,
Rodgers & Hart and Gershwin — alongside current hits — were the milieu of a woman
who won her first Grammy Award the very first time they were given out. Those classics
played as Marguerite Shannon Gleason fell in love, lived, married, raised two boys
and buried a husband too young.

Even more than the songs, though, Nana thrilled to see what the bespectacled songstress
was wearing. Having always dressed for church in matching pastel coats and short-
sleeved dresses, pocketbook in the crook of her arm, Nana didn’t let her fashion
sense slip because she was getting along in years – and was built more like the 
massive TV set in the front corner. In a time of Yves Saint Laurent gypsy dazzle,
Christian Dior silhouettes and Bob Mackie’s disco sizzle, there wasn’t a lane for
those whose bodies were miles from wide-eyed Brit supermodels like Twiggy or Chrissie
Shrimpton. With First Lady Jackie Kennedy establishing high French style via Chanel,
Balenciaga and Givenchy as a foundation of chic, plus Americans Oleg Cassini and
Lilly Pulitzer, fashion seemed a bit beyond what many mere Midwestern mortals could
pull off. Then came Diane Von Furstenberg’s curve-clinging wrap dresses, which landed
her on the cover of _Newsweek _in 1976 — and another unreachable design plateau 
beckoned. But if ’70s fashion was about the body, Ella’s success — and unstoppable
_joie de vivre — _allowed her access to _whatever_ made her happy. Feathers, sequins,
chiffons, it was body consciousness in a succulent, fun way that gave license to
me and my Nana to “have fun” with our clothes, love them like she did and watch 
the world fall in step.

A large woman who’d grown up rough, Fitzgerald spent time in a New York State reformatory
after the death of her mother, which had left her in the care of a stepfather who
most biographers suspect was abusive, and then an aunt who struggled to support 
her. Painfully realizing beauty eases the way, she struggled in her shabby clothes,
often dancing on street corners, running numbers and somehow getting by.

When she won the Amateur Talent Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1934, bringing
down the house singing Hoagy Carmichael’s “Judy,” big-band leader Fletcher Henderson
still declined to hire her. Even bandleader Chick Webb, who himself had a spinal
deformity that put his looks outside the accepted norm, was reticent. In _The New
York Times_‘ 1996 “Ella In Wonderland,” Margo Jefferson posits: “Too ugly, said 
the band leader with the tubercular spine… Was he afraid the sight of two plain 
people onstage, one malformed, the other dowdy and gawky, presumed too much on the
goodwill of his audience?”

When your dream depends on looks, that knowledge scalds. Determined once she got
her break to not look back, Fitzgerald recognized she didn’t possess Billie Holiday’s
torchy allure, Eartha Kitt’s feral sensuality or Carmen McRae’s sex appeal. But 
that wouldn’t stop the woman who took her vocal cues from the horns, as well as 
from jazz singer Connee Boswell.

“I used to be very self-conscious. I used to wish I was pretty. My cousin Georgia
always taught me that if you smile, people will like you,” she was quoted in an 
appreciation _The International Business Times_ published on the 101st anniversary
of her birth. “Sometimes people will say something you don’t like, and you get angry
a bit, but you just smile. You let it go by, even if you really would like to choke’
em. By smiling, I think I’ve made more friends than if I was the other way.”

Her smile _was_ delightful. It invited you in, made you want to listen. It didn’t
hurt that as her momentum with Webb’s orchestra increased, she co-wrote and recorded“
A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” based on the children’s nursery rhyme. In 1942, [she sang her sunny breakthrough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bgFkeDLpSI)
hit in Abbott & Costello’s _Ride’ Em Cowboy_. Though lacking funds for glamour, 
she wears a broad-brimmed hat that turns back from her glossy, high-wave bouffant.
Her camel coat — with a clutch of fabric flowers on the notched lapel — falls open,
revealing a draped suit with large buttons and a lace collar. And yes, that smile.
Irrepressible and friendly, like the song. She could be _any_ of us.

By the time I was old enough to share Ella with my grandmother, she truly looked
more like Nana than someone figuring how to be glamorous while resembling a librarian
or nurse. And like Nana, she knew how to dress up, but used the old Hollywood rules
to stand out. Beyond what are now considered sexy-secretary/hot-nerd glasses, she
understood that nuances teased.

When Annie Leibowitz shot the famous American Express portrait that placed the icon
in a tailored tomato-red dress, matching pillbox hat and her own vintage Don Loper
leopard coat beside a classic Mercedes, aesthetics collided. Spunky, darling and
chic, the smiling Ella with those cat’s-eye glasses looked foxy in extremis.

In 1976, nine years after receiving her Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammy
organization, Fitzgerald joined Mel Torme to present the Jazz category. [“Explaining”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z7iZecm5qg)
what jazz was with a silky scat that punched and popped, her floor-length black 
dress, with a chiffon overlay and sleeves that showed her arms, rippled as she moved.
And those appearances add up. The romping voice with Louis Armstrong, the bop that
she and Dizzy Gillespie explored, or the way she held her own with Duke Ellington
and his players on “Duke’s Place C Jam Blues” — even the blowsy horn punctuating
Andy Williams and Dinah Shore’s [“Singing The Blues” variety-show mash-up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2i7ErC84Ac)
or her nightclub stylings [with Frank Sinatra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xafBWOxqssg)
across the decades — she is always Ella, perfectly turned out, absolutely incandescent.
To see Ella in her blue metallic brocade gown encrusted with jewels — plus a shiny
Mary Tyler Moore wig — [pole-vaulting through “Sunny”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U9uPIPzG8o),
side-by-side in rocking chairs with shriek-inducing sex symbol of the day Tom Jones,
was classic variety-show stuff. But to watch the bespectacled vocalist toy with 
him, joke about “rocking or singing,” she reduces the Welsh vocalist to raw enamorment.
Ella _knows_, and she knows how to use it.

Appearing late in her career on ABC’s Emmy-winning [Sammy Davis Jr 60^(th) Anniversary Special](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eivJTwjkHDA)
in 1990, her column of black sparkle still packs wallop, making escort Michael Jackson
seem like a little boy. Resplendent in a body-grazing black sequined floor-length
number, with a cut-to-there slit up the front, she delivered “Too Close for Comfort”
with a fluidity that made the glam seem second nature.

It wasn’t, though. Fitzgerald, as she made her way, learned what worked -– and worked
to take what she had and make it an asset. Ella sought designers who understood 
that glamour and beauty came in all sizes. They emphasized her hips, décolletage
and shoulders, using luxury to create delight. For example, the pictures of her 
and her friend Billie Holiday together in their furs are pure little-girl glee. 
For Holiday, who brokered pain and sensuality, and Fitzgerald, whose joy cloaked
a tough past, the extravagant clothing was as thrilling to their inner children 
as the grown women they were.

As the ’40s turned to the ’50s, Fitzgerald turned to Zelda Wynn Valdes, a breakthrough
African American designer who believed dresses should heighten the woman and celebrate
her attributes. The pair forged an alliance of charmeuse, hammered satin, chiffon,
burned-out velvet, knits, embroidery, sequins and expert tailoring. Often credited
for designing, but certainly sewing, many of Playboy’s iconic original Bunny costumes,
the woman who created [freakum dresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArDXxTsJJoo)
for Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Mae West and Marlene Dietrich long before
Beyoncé consolidated the concept became Fitzgerald’s go-to couturier.

As writer Princess Gabbara quotes Valdes on her work for Fitzgerald in a 2018 Shondaland
profile, “I was able to measure her once, but thereafter she was so busy that she
didn’t have the time. She would order — always in a rush — and I would study photos
of her and guess her increasing size. She always said they fit, and she’d order 
more, always three at a time. I never had more than three to four days to finish
the gowns. I am pleased to say I never missed a delivery.”

[[

**Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Brown (with Milt Jackson)**

Beyond the sheer pleasure of dressing up, Fitzgerald used what she wore to open 
doors. All women did. They knew what they wore was presentational shorthand; the
clothes spoke volumes about who they were, their place in society, even their personality.
To dress well meant – for my grandmother, the women of all ages at church, and especially
the elegantly turned-out African American ladies you’d see shopping at Halle Brothers
or Higbees in downtown Cleveland – that you were elegant, respectable, of equal 
stature to anyone else whether in a restaurant, a department store or on the street.
Clothes buttressed you from marginalizing judgments, something even more crucial
for a black woman like Fitzgerald.

Dress also made you glorious, colorful, grand. It could say “I am,” in a way that
was more than just classic. For my grandmother, who wouldn’t surrender her style,
as well as all the other women who loved Ella — heck, for me as a girl wanting to
wear sparkly things, chiffon layers, fun hats — Ella Fitzgerald said, “Yes, you 
can! Do it! Love it! Swing it with as much joy as you have in your heart.”

In 2017, Dianne Reeves recalled to _JazzTimes_‘ Christopher Loudon that early in
her career, still in high school, she’d gotten to see Fitzgerald at Denver’s Warehouse
club, where the legend “swung a series of Beatles tunes with her trio.” After the
show they met and Fitzgerald asked the young woman, who was performing in the club’s
basement, about her singing. The next night, when Fitzgerald was struck by elevation
sickness, management asked Reeves to go sing to the main room.

“I hung out in her dressing room,” she recalled, “and her wardrobe was still there.
In the corner were these periwinkle blue pumps. I put them on and went out, and 
can’t even remember what I sang, because I was completely focused on her shoes.”

That’s what Fitzgerald did: imbue awkward kids with the sense they could also be
glamorous. Beyond sex, beyond fame, there was music — and if you felt it, you could
find your place in clothes, too. That was powerful and alluring in not-so-obvious
ways, even to a skinny kid sitting with her grandma.

In 1980, on the TV special _The Carpenters: Music, Music, Music_, Karen Carpenter,
painfully thin in a black satin pantsuit, [shared a medley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDp9b9eYoLM)
of a marimba-based “This Masquerade,” “My Funny Valentine,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,”“
As Time Goes By” and “Someone To Watch Over Me” with the elder songstress, who wore
another chiffon overlay gown. Though born decades apart, a sisterhood between them
transcends age, looks and the fact that the tomboy drummer and the former numbers
runner were not born into the clothes they wear. Though many of the songs the pair
sing together are sad, they pull you in and make you feel better, comfortable, okay
in emotions you might not want to feel. Kind of like wearing fancy clothes when 
you know you’re just a gawky kid – and don’t think you can pull off the chic. Their
effortlessness wasn’t lost on a 10-year old, who recognized that Carpenter and the
lady closer to Nana’s age both applied the same principles to defy fashion magazine
dictates. They pulled it off, especially the spirited legend, so I could, too.

“I compare her to Ella Fitzgerald,” USC professor Karen Tongson, who authored _Why
Karen Carpenter Matters_, tells RJ Smith in a 2019 _Los Angeles Times_ piece. “Ella
can be singing a sad song, but you always heard the smile in her voice. Well, Karen,
she can be singing a happy song, but you hear the sadness in her voice. I think 
it mimics a kind of heaviness in ourselves.”

Ella. Beyond the Verve Records repertoire, filled with the classic American songbook
tunes, collaborations with the best jazz musicians of the day. More than the duets
with everyone from Sinatra to Armstrong, Flip Wilson to Tom Jones. Even beyond the
epic Memorex commercial where she shatters the wine glass, Ella made being elegant
something friendly.

“I know I’m no glamour girl,” she is famously quoted, “and it’s not easy for me 
to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I’ve
got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and
sing.”

Fitzgerald put so much joy in what she did – many believed to mask her rough start–
that the rest didn’t matter. But when you look at her clothes, fancy by any standard,
you realize Ella’s delight made them something any of us could wear. Not just the
models and the rich girls, but anybody who wanted to. Whether a young woman in with
a deep, wrapped neckline or a dowager dripping sequins, she wore them with a laugh
and a song — and invited all of us to come along for the party.

![When you look at Ella Fitzgerald's clothes, fancy by any standard, you realize
her delight made them something any of us could wear.](https://i0.wp.com/mediad.
publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/placed_wide/nprshared/201909/757582677.
jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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