These are oddball 78s in great shape (they need cleaning tho). Mostly visually graded, but the few I played are solid players, any major defects will be noted
1. RCA 20-4234 NOT FOR SALE Gene Krupa E- / E- 2. HMV 9425 Xavier Cugat E- / E- 3. DECCA 18395 Hoagy Carmichael E- / E- 4. MGM 11206 Duddy DeFranco E- / E- 5. DECCA 1840 Chick Webb / Ella Fitzgerald E- / E- 6/ Columbia 36713 Harry James V++ / V++ Looks E but I played this one, plays a little below grade 7. Decca 18713 Ella fitzgerald V+ / V+
8. Columbia 38713 Jimmy Dorsey V+ / V+ label looks terrible 9. Capitol 1922 Ella Mae Morse E / E one side looks greyer than the other but both play great 10. Cadence 1232 Julius LaRosa V+ / V+ 11. Bluebird 10553 Glen Miller V+ / V+ 12. Bluebird 11029 Geln Miller E- / E-




Shipping: $8


WIKIPEDIA:

A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue of . The sound vibration are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a . To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, very faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring , or directly to the listener's ears through -type earphones.

The phonograph was invented in 1877 by . 's made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the , including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, initiated the transition from to with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, which is predominantly used in many languages. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the or needle, pickup system, and the sound and systems.

The disc was the dominant commercial audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century. In the mid-1960s the use of and were introduced as alternatives. In the 1980s, phonograph use declined sharply due to the popularity of cassettes and the rise of the , as well as the later introduction of in the 2000s. However, records are still a favorite format for some , , , and (particularly in and ), and have undergone a .

Contents Terminology ‹ The below () is being considered for merging. See to help reach a consensus. › This section needs additional citations for . Please help by . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2019) ()

Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world (see below). In more modern usage, the playback device is often called a "turntable", "record player", or "", although each of these terms denote categorically distinct items. When used in conjunction with a as part of a setup, turntables are often colloquially called "decks". In later electric phonographs (more often known since the 1940s as record players or turntables), the motions of the stylus are converted into an by a , then converted back into sound by a .

Close up of the mechanism of an Edison Amberola, circa 1915

The term phonograph ("sound writing") was derived from the words φωνή (phonē, 'sound' or 'voice') and γραφή (graphē, 'writing'). The similar related terms gramophone (from the Greek γράμμα gramma 'letter' and φωνή phōnē 'voice') and graphophone have similar root meanings. The roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as ("light writing"), ("distant writing"), and ("distant sound"). The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic ; in 1852 carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of , involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone", "Graphonole" and the like were still specific to various makers of sometimes very different (i.e. cylinder and disc) machines; so considerable use was made of the generic term "talking machine", especially in print. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords, tongue, and lips – a potential source of confusion both then and now.

United Kingdom

In , "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using , which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the . Originally, "gramophone" was a proprietary of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision decreed that it had become a generic term; it has been so used in the UK and most Commonwealth countries since.[] The term "phonograph" was usually restricted to machines that used .

"Gramophone" generally referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer records, 33+1⁄3-rpm LPs (long-playing records) and 45-rpm , and EPs (extended-play recordings), the common name became "record player" or "turntable". Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio and, later, might also play audiotape . From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, ) or a "stereo" (most systems being by the mid-1960s).

United States Early phonograph at Deaf Smith County Historical Museum in ,

In , "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to 's upstart Gramophone, a very different machine which played discs (although Edison's original Phonograph patent included the use of discs). "Talking machine" was the comprehensive generic term, but from about 1902 on, the general public was increasingly applying the word "phonograph" indiscriminately to both cylinder and disc machines and to the records they played. By the time of the First World War, the mass advertising and popularity of the (a line of disc-playing machines characterized by their concealed horns) sold by the was leading to widespread generic use of the word "victrola" for any machine that played discs, which were generally called "phonograph records" or simply "records", but almost never "Victrola records".

Boy and toy record player, 1920s

After electrical disc-playing machines appeared on the market in the late 1920s, often combined with a radio receiver, the term "record player" was increasingly favored by the public. Manufacturers, however, typically advertised such combinations as "radio-phonographs". Portable record players (no radio included), with a latched cover and an integrated and , were becoming popular as well, especially in schools and for use by children and teenagers.

In the years following the Second World War, as "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, ) and, later, "stereo" () component sound systems slowly evolved from an exotic specialty item into a common feature of American homes, the description of the record-spinning component as a "record changer" (which could automatically play through a stacked series of discs) or a "turntable" (which could hold only one disc at a time) entered common usage. By the 1980s, the use of a "record changer" was widely disparaged. So, the "turntable" emerged triumphant and retained its position to the present. Through all these changes, however, the discs have continued to be known as "phonograph records" or, much more commonly, simply as "records".

Gramophone, as a brand name, was not used in the United States after 1902, and the word quickly fell out of use there, although it has survived in its nickname form, Grammy, as the name of the . The Grammy trophy itself is a small rendering of a gramophone, resembling a Berliner Gramophone with a taper arm.

Modern amplifier-component manufacturers continue to label the input jack for a magnetic pickup cartridge as the "phono" input.

Australia Wood engraving published in , depicting a public demonstration of new technology at the Royal Society of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) on 8 August 1878.

In , "record player" was the term; "turntable" was a more technical term; "gramophone" was restricted to the old mechanical (i.e., wind-up) players; and "phonograph" was used as in . The "phonograph" was first demonstrated in Australia on 14 June 1878 to a meeting of the by the Society's Honorary Secretary, who published "The Sounds of the Consonants, as Indicated by the Phonograph" in the Society's journal in November that year. On 8 August 1878 the phonograph was publicly demonstrated at the Society's annual conversazione, along with a range of other new inventions, including the .

Early history Predecessors to the phonograph

Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to 's phonograph, Edison being the first to invent a device that could both record and reproduce sound. The phonograph's predecessors include 's phonautograph, and 's paleophone. Recordings made with the phonautograph were intended to be visual representations of the sound, but were never sonically reproduced until 2008. Cros's paleophone was intended to both record and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the time of Edison's successful demonstration of the phonograph in 1877.

Dictionary illustration of a . This version uses a barrel made of . Phonautograph Main article:

Direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects such as had been made by English physicist in 1807, but the first known device for recording airborne speech, music and other sounds is the , patented in 1857 by French typesetter and inventor . In this device, sound waves travelling through the air vibrated a parchment which was linked to a bristle, and the bristle traced a line through a thin coating of soot on a sheet of paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder. The sound vibrations were recorded as undulations or other irregularities in the traced line. Scott's phonautograph was intended purely for the visual study and analysis of the tracings. Reproduction of the recorded sound was not possible with the original phonautograph.

In 2008, phonautograph recordings made by Scott were played back as sound by American audio historians, who used optical scanning and computer processing to convert the traced waveforms into digital audio files. These recordings, made circa 1860, include fragments of two French songs and a recitation in Italian.

Paleophone

, a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leap from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to devising a definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the , a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute.

Cros proposed the use of , a process already in use to make metal printing plates from line drawings, to convert an insubstantial phonautograph tracing in soot into a groove or ridge on a metal disc or cylinder. This metal surface would then be given the same motion and speed as the original recording surface. A linked to a would be made to ride in the groove or on the ridge so that the stylus would be moved back and forth in accordance with the recorded vibrations. It would transmit these vibrations to the connected diaphragm, and the diaphragm would transmit them to the air.

An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised a more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure. The author of this article called the device a phonographe, but Cros himself favored the word paleophone, sometimes rendered in French as voix du passé ('voice of the past').

Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception.

Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at the age of 45.

The early phonographs for Edison's phonograph, May 18, 1880

conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by . His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in and several newspapers in the beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a 'talking-machine' can be found in the on May 9), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was on February 19, 1878, as US Patent 200,521). "In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the Scientific American, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: 'Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?' The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..."

Edison presented his own account of inventing the phonograph:

"I was experimenting," he said, "on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. The platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. Over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm traveled over the disk; and any signals given through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. If this disc was removed from the machine and put on a similar machine provided with a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signals to be repeated into another wire. The ordinary speed of telegraphic signals is thirty-five to forty words a minute; but with this machine several hundred words were possible.

"From my experiments on the telephone I knew of how to work a pawl connected to the ; and this engaging a ratchet-wheel served to give continuous rotation to a . This pulley was connected by a cord to a little paper toy representing a man sawing wood. Hence, if one shouted: ',' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. I reached the conclusion that if I could record the movements of the diaphragm properly, I could cause such records to reproduce the original movements imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in recording and reproducing the human voice.

"Instead of using a disk I designed a little machine using a provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed , which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. A sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $18, was marked on the sketch. I was in the habit of marking the price I would pay on each sketch. If the workman lost, I would pay his regular wages; if he made more than the wages, he kept it. The workman who got the sketch was John Kruesi. I didn't have much faith that it would work, expecting that I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of."

The music critic attended an early demonstration (1881–2) of a similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he writes "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct."

newspaper from Melbourne, Australia, reported on an 1878 demonstration at the , writing "There was a large attendance of ladies and gentlemen, who appeared greatly interested in the various scientific instruments exhibited. Among these the most interesting, perhaps, was the trial made by Mr. Sutherland with the phonograph, which was most amusing. Several trials were made, and were all more or less successful. "Rule Britannia" was distinctly repeated, but great laughter was caused by the repetition of the convivial song of "He's a jolly good fellow," which sounded as if it was being sung by an old man of 80 with a very cracked voice."

Early machines Phonograph cabinet built with , 1912. The clockwork portion of the phonograph is concealed in the base beneath the statue; the amplifying horn is the shell behind the human figure.

Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a thin sheet of metal, normally , which was temporarily wrapped around a grooved mounted on a correspondingly supported by plain and threaded . While the cylinder was rotated and slowly progressed along its , the airborne vibrated a connected to a that indented the foil into the cylinder's groove, thereby recording the vibrations as "hill-and-dale" variations of the depth of the indentation.

Playback was accomplished by exactly repeating the recording procedure, the only difference being that the recorded foil now served to vibrate the stylus, which transmitted its vibrations to the diaphragm and onward into the air as audible sound. Although Edison's very first experimental tinfoil phonograph used separate and somewhat different recording and playback assemblies, in subsequent machines, a single diaphragm and stylus served both purposes. One peculiar consequence was that it was possible to additional sound onto a recording being played back. The recording was heavily worn by each playing, and it was nearly impossible to accurately remount a recorded foil after it had been removed from the cylinder. In this form, the only practical use that could be found for the phonograph was as a startling novelty for private amusement at home or public exhibitions for profit.

Edison's early patents show that he was aware that sound could be recorded as a on a disc, but Edison concentrated his efforts on cylinders, since the groove on the outside of a rotating cylinder provides a constant velocity to the stylus in the groove, which Edison considered more "scientifically correct".

Edison's patent specified that the audio recording be , and it was not until 1886 that vertically modulated incised recording using wax-coated cylinders was patented by and . They named their version the .

Introduction of the disc record

The use of a flat recording surface instead of a cylindrical one was an obvious alternative which thought-experimenter Charles Cros initially favored and which practical experimenter Thomas Edison and others actually tested in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The oldest surviving example is a copper of a recording cut into a wax disc in 1881.

Cylindrical records continued in use until the mid-20th century. The commercialization of sound recording technology had been initially aimed at use in business correspondence, i.e. transcription into writing,[] in which the cylindrical form offered certain advantages. With paper documents being the end product, the cylinders were considered ephemeral; need to archive large numbers of bulky, fragile sound recordings seemed unlikely, and the ease of producing multiple copies was not a consideration.

In 1887, patented a variant of the phonograph which he named the Gramophone. Berliner's approach was essentially the same one proposed, but never implemented, by Charles Cros in 1877. The diaphragm was linked to the recording stylus in a way that caused it to vibrate laterally (side to side) as it traced a spiral onto a zinc disc very thinly coated with a compound of . The zinc disc was then immersed in a bath of chromic acid; this etched a groove into the disc where the stylus had removed the coating, after which the recording could be played. With some later improvements, the flat discs of Berliner could be produced in large quantities at much lower cost than the cylinders of Edison's system.

In May 1889, in , the first "phonograph parlor" opened. It featured a row of coin-operated machines, each supplied with a different wax cylinder record. The customer selected a machine according to the title that it advertised, inserted a , then heard the recording through -like listening tubes. By the mid-1890s, most American cities had at least one phonograph parlor. The coin-operated mechanism was invented by Louis T. Glass and William S. Arnold. The cabinet contained an Edison Class M or Class E phonograph. The Class M was powered by a wet-cell glass battery that would spill dangerous acid if it tipped over or broke. The Class E sold for a lower price and ran on 120 V DC. The phenomenon of phonograph parlors peaked in Paris around 1900: in 's luxurious salon, patrons sat in plush upholstered chairs and chose from among many hundreds of available cylinders by using speaking tubes to communicate with attendants on the floor below.

(2:23) Menu 0:00 This 1906 recording (with the character being voiced by ) enticed store customers with the wonders of the invention.
2 minutes, 23 seconds. Problems playing this file? See .

By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded the master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced -based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 90–150 copies of each record. However, as demand for certain records grew, popular artists still needed to re-record and re-re-record their songs. Reportedly, the medium's first major African-American star was obliged to perform his "The Laughing Song" (or the separate "The Whistling Coon") literally thousands of times in a studio during his recording career. Sometimes he would sing "The Laughing Song" more than fifty times in a day, at twenty cents per rendition. (The average price of a single cylinder in the mid-1890s was about fifty cents.)

Oldest surviving recordings

's cylinder recording for an experimental talking clock is often identified as the oldest surviving playable sound recording, although the evidence advanced for its early date is controversial. Wax recordings of 's choral music made on June 29, 1888, at in London were thought to be the oldest-known surviving musical recordings, until the recent playback by a group of American historians of a recording of made on April 9, 1860. The 1860 phonautogram had not until then been played, as it was only a transcription of sound waves into graphic form on paper for visual study. Recently developed optical scanning and image processing techniques have given new life to early recordings by making it possible to play unusually delicate or physically unplayable media without physical contact.

A recording made on a sheet of tinfoil at an 1878 demonstration of Edison's phonograph in St. Louis, Missouri has been played back by optical scanning and digital analysis. A few other early tinfoil recordings are known to survive, including a slightly earlier one which is believed to preserve the voice of U.S. President , but as of May 2014 they have not yet been scanned.[] These antique tinfoil recordings, which have typically been stored folded, are too fragile to be played back with a stylus without seriously damaging them. Edison's 1877 tinfoil recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb, not preserved, has been called the first instance of . On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, Edison recounted reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb to test his first machine. The 1927 event was filmed by an early camera, and an audio clip from that film's soundtrack is sometimes mistakenly presented as the original 1877 recording. Wax cylinder recordings made by 19th century media legends such as and Shakespearean actor are amongst the earliest verified recordings by the famous that have survived to the present.

Improvements at the Volta Laboratory Main article:

and his two associates took Edison's phonograph and modified it considerably to make it reproduce sound from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work at Bell's in Washington, D. C., in 1879, and continued until they were granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax.

Although Edison had in 1877 the fame bestowed on him for this invention was not due to its efficiency. Recording with his tinfoil phonograph was too difficult to be practical, as the tinfoil tore easily, and even when the was properly adjusted, its reproduction of sound was distorted, and good for only a few playbacks; nevertheless Edison had discovered the idea of . However immediately after his discovery he did not improve it, allegedly because of an agreement to spend the next five years developing the system.

Volta's early challenge

Meanwhile, Bell, a and experimenter at heart, was looking for new worlds to conquer after his invention of the . According to , it was through that Bell took up the phonograph challenge. Bell had married in 1879 while Hubbard was president of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., and his organization, which had purchased the Edison patent, was financially troubled because people did not want to buy a machine which seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate.

In 1879 Hubbard got Bell interested in improving the phonograph, and it was agreed that a should be set up in Washington. Experiments were also to be conducted on the , which resulted in the .

Volta Graphophone See also: A 'G' (Graham Bell) model Graphophone being played back by a typist after its cylinder had recorded dictation.

By 1881, the Volta associates had succeeded in improving an Edison tinfoil machine to some extent. Wax was put in the grooves of the heavy iron cylinder, and no tinfoil was used. Rather than apply for a patent at that time, however, they deposited the machine in a sealed box at the , and specified that it was not to be opened without the consent of two of the three men.

The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax which had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following was the text of one of their recordings: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am a Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Most of the disc machines designed at the Volta Lab had their disc mounted on vertical turntables. The explanation is that in the early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables.

One interesting exception was a horizontal seven inch turntable. The machine, although made in 1886, was a duplicate of one made earlier but taken to Europe by . Tainter was granted on July 10, 1888. The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90 degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position. While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch.

The preserved Bell and Tainter records are of both the lateral cut and the Edison-style hill-and-dale (up-and-down) styles. Edison for many years used the on both his and , and is credited with the invention of the lateral cut, acid-etched Gramophone record in 1887. The Volta associates, however, had been experimenting with both formats and directions of groove modulation as early as 1881.

The basic distinction between the Edison's first phonograph patent and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin foil, while Bell and Tainter's invention called for cutting, or "engraving", the sound waves into a wax record with a sharp recording stylus.

Graphophone commercialization

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable , phrasing, timing, , and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her .

After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the in . Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to , who founded to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the .

While Fitzgerald appeared in movies and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with , , and were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as "", "", "", and "". In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included fourteen , the , and the .

Contents Early life

Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in , Virginia. She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance "Tempie" Henry, both described as "" in the 1920 census. Her parents were unmarried but lived together in the of Newport News for at least two and a half years after she was born. In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald's mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph da Silva, moved to , in , . Her half-sister, Frances da Silva, who she stayed close to for all of her life, was born in 1923. By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, a poor Italian area. She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929.

Starting in third grade, Fitzgerald loved dancing and admired . She performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime. She and her family were and were active in the Bethany , where she attended worship services, , and Sunday school. The church provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music.

Fitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by , , and . She loved the Boswell Sisters' lead singer , later saying, "My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it...I tried so hard to sound just like her."

In 1932, when Fitzgerald was fifteen, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Her stepfather took care of her until April 1933 when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. This seemingly swift change in her circumstances, reinforced by what Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson describes as rumors of "ill treatment" by her stepfather, leaves him to speculate that Da Silva might have abused her.

Fitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated runner. She never talked publicly about this time in her life. When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in the in in the Bronx. When the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the , a state reformatory school in Hudson, New York.

Early career A young Fitzgerald, photographed by in January 1940

While she seems to have survived during 1933 and 1934 in part from singing on the streets of , Fitzgerald made her most important debut at age 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest at the . She had intended to go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated by a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead. Performing in the style of , she sang "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection" and won first prize. She won the chance to perform at the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of her disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part of her prize.

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the band at the . She was introduced to drummer and bandleader , who had asked his recently signed singer Charlie Linton to help find him a female singer. Although Webb was "reluctant to sign her...because she was gawky and unkempt, a 'diamond in the rough,'" he offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at .

Met with approval by both audiences and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb's orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group's performances at Harlem's . Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs, including "Love and Kisses" and "". But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "", a song she co-wrote, that brought her public acclaim. "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a major hit on the radio and was also one of the biggest-selling records of the decade.

Webb died of on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra with Fitzgerald taking on the role of bandleader. She recorded nearly 150 songs with Webb's orchestra between 1935 and 1942. In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight.

Decca years Fitzgerald with , , , and in New York City, 1947.

In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in Fitzgerald's band, Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, she started to work as lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July her band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia. While working for , she had hits with & , , and . Producer became her manager in the mid-1940s after she began singing for , a concert series begun by Granz.

With the demise of the and the decline of the great touring , a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with 's big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including 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 "" arranged by 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 bebop recording of "" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.

Verve years Ella Fitzgerald at the Paul Masson Winery, Saratoga, California in 1986

Fitzgerald made her first tour of in July 1954 for the Australian-based American promoter . This was the first of Gordon's famous "Big Show" promotions and the 'package' tour also included , and comedian .

Although the tour was a big hit with audiences and set a new box office record for Australia, it was marred by an incident of racial discrimination that caused Fitzgerald to miss the first two concerts in , and Gordon had to arrange two later free concerts to compensate ticket holders. Although the four members of Fitzgerald's entourage – Fitzgerald, her pianist , her assistant (and cousin) Georgiana Henry, and manager Norman Granz – all had first-class tickets on their scheduled flight from Honolulu to Australia, they were ordered to leave the aircraft after they had already boarded and were refused permission to re-board the aircraft to retrieve their luggage and clothing. As a result, they were stranded in for three days before they could get another flight to Sydney. Although a contemporary Australian press report quoted an Australian Pan-Am spokesperson who denied that the incident was racially based, Fitzgerald, Henry, Lewis and Granz filed a civil suit for racial discrimination against in December 1954 and in a 1970 television interview Fitzgerald confirmed that they had won the suit and received what she described as a "nice settlement".

Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's (JATP) concerts by 1955. She left Decca, and Granz, now her manager, created around her. She later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman ... felt that I should do other things, so he produced with me. It was a turning point in my life."

On March 15, 1955, Ella Fitzgerald opened her initial engagement at the nightclub in Hollywood, after lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. dramatized the incident as the musical drama, , in 2008. It had previously been widely reported that Fitzgerald was the first black performer to play the Mocambo, following Monroe's intervention, but this is not true. African-American singers , , and all played the Mocambo in 1952 and 1953, according to stories published at the time in magazine and .

, released in 1956, was the first of eight Song Book sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the . Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience. The sets are the most well-known items in her discography.

Fitzgerald in 1968, courtesy of the estate

was the only Song Book on which the composer she interpreted played with her. and his longtime collaborator both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald. The Song Book series ended up becoming the singer's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. The New York Times wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration."

Days after Fitzgerald's death, columnist wrote that in the Song Book series Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as ' contemporaneous integration of white and soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians." , out of respect for Fitzgerald, prohibited from re-releasing his own recordings in separate albums for individual composers in the same way.[]

Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and in 1972 and 1983; the albums being, respectively, and . A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with , , featuring the songs of .

While recording the Song Books and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers. In 1961 Fitzgerald bought a house in the district of Copenhagen, Denmark, after she began a relationship with a Danish man. Though the relationship ended after a year, Fitzgerald regularly returned to Denmark over the next three years and even considered buying a jazz club there. The house was sold in 1963, and Fitzgerald permanently returned to the United States.

Fitzgerald performing at the in in April 1963

There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. shows a typical Jazz at the Philharmonic set from Fitzgerald. and display her vocal jazz canon. is still one of her best-selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning performance of "" in which she forgets the lyrics but improvises magnificently to compensate.

Verve Records was sold to in 1960 for $3 million and in 1967 MGM failed to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Over the next five years she flitted between , and . Her material at this time represented a departure from her typical jazz repertoire. For Capitol she recorded , an album of , , an album of traditional , , a -influenced album, and , a series of six medleys that fulfilled her obligations for the label. During this period, she had her last US chart single with a cover of 's "", previously a hit for , and some months later a top-five hit for .

The surprise success of the 1972 album led Granz to found , his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums for the label. recorded live in 1974 with pianist , guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Keter Betts and drummer Bobby Durham, was considered by many to be some of her best work. The following year she again performed with Joe Pass on German television station in . Her years with Pablo Records also documented the decline in her voice. "She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and her voice was harder, with a wider vibrato", one biographer wrote. Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993.

Film and television Fitzgerald shakes hands with after performing in the , 1981

In her most notable screen role, Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in 's 1955 jazz film . The film costarred and singer . Even though she had already worked in the movies (she sang two songs in the 1942 film ), she was "delighted" when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, and, "at the time ... considered her role in the movie the biggest thing ever to have happened to her." Amid The New York Times pan of the film when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, "About five minutes (out of ninety-five) suggest the picture this might have been. Take the ingenious prologue ... [or] take the fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a few spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with her strong mobile features and voice."

After Pete Kelly's Blues, she appeared in sporadic movie cameos, in (1958) and (1960).

She made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on , , , , and alongside other greats , , , and many others. She was also frequently featured on . Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the "Three Little Maids" song from 's comic alongside and on Shore's weekly variety series in 1963. A performance at in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside and on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with on the Carpenters' television special .

Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, her most memorable being an ad for . In the commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass while being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape. The tape was played back and the recording also broke another glass, asking: "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" She also appeared in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing and scatting to the fast-food chain's longtime slogan, "We do chicken right!" Her last commercial campaign was for , in which she was photographed by .

Ella Fitzgerald Just One of Those Things is a film about her life including interviews with many famous singers and musicians who worked with her and her son. It was directed by Leslie Woodhead and produced by Reggie Nadelson. It was released in the UK in 2019.

Collaborations This section does not any . Please help by . Unsourced material may be challenged and . (April 2020) ()

Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with the vocal quartet & , trumpeter , the guitarist , and the bandleaders and .

From 1943 to 1950, Fitzgerald recorded seven songs with the Ink Spots featuring Bill Kenny. Of the seven, four reached the top of the pop charts, including "" and "," which both reached No. 1. Fitzgerald recorded three Verve studio albums with Louis Armstrong, two albums of standards (1956's and 1957's ), and a third album featured music from the opera . Fitzgerald also recorded a number of sides with Armstrong for Decca in the early 1950s. Fitzgerald is sometimes referred to as the quintessential swing singer, and her meetings with Count Basie are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald features on one track on Basie's 1957 album , while her 1963 album is remembered as one of her greatest recordings. With the 'New Testament' Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a young , this album proved a respite from the 'Song Book' recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. Fitzgerald and Basie also collaborated on the 1972 album , and on the 1979 albums , and . Fitzgerald and Joe Pass recorded four albums together toward the end of Fitzgerald's career. She recorded several albums with piano accompaniment, but a guitar proved the perfect melodic foil for her. Fitzgerald and Pass appeared together on the albums (1973), (1986), (1983) and (1976). Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington recorded two live albums and two studio albums. Her Duke Ellington Song Book placed Ellington firmly in the canon known as the Great American Songbook, and the 1960s saw Fitzgerald and the 'Duke' meet on the for the 1966 album , and in for . Their 1965 album is also extremely well received.

Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen over her long career. The trumpeters and Dizzy Gillespie, the guitarist , and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, , , , , and all worked with Fitzgerald mostly in live, small group settings.

Possibly Fitzgerald's greatest unrealized collaboration (in terms of popular music) was a studio or live album with . The two appeared on the same stage only periodically over the years, in television specials in 1958 and 1959, and again on 1967's , a show that also featured . Pianist Paul Smith has said, "Ella loved working with [Frank]. Sinatra gave her his dressing-room on A Man and His Music and couldn't do enough for her." When asked, Norman Granz would cite "complex contractual reasons" for the fact that the two artists never recorded together. Fitzgerald's appearance with Sinatra and Count Basie in June 1974 for a series of concerts at , Las Vegas, was seen as an important incentive for Sinatra to return from his self-imposed retirement of the early 1970s. The shows were a great success, and September 1975 saw them gross $1,000,000 in two weeks on , in a triumvirate with the Count Basie Orchestra.

Illness and death

Fitzgerald suffered from for several years of her later life, which had led to numerous . In 1985, Fitzgerald was hospitalized briefly for respiratory problems, in 1986 for congestive heart failure, and in 1990 for exhaustion. In March 1990 she appeared at the in London, England with the for the launch of Jazz FM, plus a gala dinner at the at which she performed. In 1993, she had to have both of her legs amputated below the knee due to the effects of diabetes. Her eyesight was affected as well.

She died in her home from a on June 15, 1996, at the age of 79. A few hours after her death, the was launched at the . In tribute, the marquee read: "Ella We Will Miss You." Her funeral was private, and she was buried at in Inglewood, CA.

Personal life

Fitzgerald married at least twice, and there is evidence that suggests that she may have married a third time. Her first marriage was in 1941, to Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The marriage was in 1942. Her second marriage was in December 1947, to the famous player , whom she had met while on tour with 's band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances, whom they christened With Fitzgerald and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by his mother's aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953, due to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue to perform together.

In July 1957, reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in . She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment in , but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months' hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.

Fitzgerald was notoriously shy. player , who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with , remembered that "she didn't hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music...She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself to herself, for the gig." When, later in her career, the named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, "I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do but I think I do better when I sing."

From 1949 to 1956, Fitzgerald resided in , New York, an enclave of prosperous African Americans where she counted among her neighbors, , , , and other jazz luminaries.

Fitzgerald was a civil rights activist; using her talent to break racial barriers across the nation. She was awarded the Equal Justice Award and the American Black Achievement Award. In 1949, recruited Fitzgerald for the tour. The Jazz at the Philharmonic tour would specifically target segregated venues. Granz required promoters to ensure that there was no "colored" or "white" seating. He ensured Fitzgerald was to receive equal pay and accommodations regardless of her sex and race. If the conditions were not met shows were cancelled.

Bill Reed, author of Hot from Harlem: Twelve African American Entertainers, referred to Fitzgerald as the "Civil Rights Crusader", facing discrimination throughout her career. In 1954 on her way to one of her concerts in Australia she was unable to board the Pan American flight due to racial discrimination. Although she faced several obstacles and racial barriers, she was recognized as a "cultural ambassador", receiving the in 1987 and America's highest non-military honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1993, Fitzgerald established the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation focusing on charitable grants for four major categories: academic opportunities for children, music education, basic care needs for the less fortunate, medical research revolving around diabetes, heart disease, and vision impairment. Her goals were to give back and provide opportunities for those "at risk" and less fortunate. In addition, she supported several nonprofit organizations like the , City of Hope, and the .

Discography and collections Further information:

The primary collections of Fitzgerald's media and memorabilia reside at and are shared between the and the

Awards, citations and honors Further information:

Fitzgerald won thirteen , and received the in 1967.

In 1958 Fitzgerald became the first African American female to win at the inaugural show.

Other major awards and honors she received during her career were the , , first Lifetime Achievement Award (named "Ella" in her honor) , and the for Lifetime Musical Achievement, , and the UCLA Medal (1987). Across town at the , she received the USC "Magnum Opus" Award which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. In 1986, she received an honorary doctorate of Music from Yale University. In 1990, she received an of Music from .

Tributes and legacy Fitzgerald in 1960 by

The career history and archival material from Fitzgerald's long career are housed in the Archives Center at the 's , while her personal music arrangements are at the . Her extensive collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library at , and her extensive collection of published sheet music was donated to UCLA. Harvard gave her an honorary degree in music in 1990.

In 1997, created a week-long music festival with to honor Fitzgerald in her birth city.

, , and have all recorded albums in tribute to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album To Ella with Love (1996) features fourteen jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the album also features the trumpeter . Bridgewater's album (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Fitzgerald during her career, including the pianist , the trumpeter Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, double bassist Ray Brown. Bridgewater's following album, , was recorded live on April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st birthday.

Austin's album, For Ella (2002) features 11 songs most immediately associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated for a . In 2007, , was released, a tribute album recorded for Fitzgerald's 90th birthday. It featured artists such as , , , , , , , , Dianne Reeves, , and , collating songs most readily associated with the "First Lady of Song". Folk singer 's album (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Her accompanist Tommy Flanagan affectionately remembered Fitzgerald on his album Lady be Good ... For Ella (1994).

"", a tribute to Fitzgerald written by and performed by French singer , was a hit in Europe in 1987 and 1988. Fitzgerald is also referred to in the 1976 hit "" from his album , and the song "I Love Being Here With You", written by and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording of "" from his album (1984) includes a homage to some of the song's previous performers, including 'Lady Ella' herself. She is also honored in the song "First Lady" by Canadian artist .

In 2008, the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News named its new 276-seat theater the Ella Fitzgerald Theater. The theater is located several blocks away from her birthplace on Marshall Avenue. The Grand Opening performers (October 11 and 12, 2008) were and .

In 2012, performed a "virtual duet" with Ella Fitzgerald on his Christmas album Merry Christmas, Baby, and his television special of the same name.

There is in Yonkers, the city in which she grew up, created by American artist Vinnie Bagwell. It is located southeast of the main entrance to the / station in front of the city's . The statue's location is one of 14 tour stops on the . A bust of Fitzgerald is on the campus of in Orange, California. created a series of over 70 bronze sculptures at the St. Louis Arch Museum at the request of the National Park Service; the series, "Jazz: An American Art Form", depicts the evolution of jazz and features jazz performers including Fitzgerald.

On January 9, 2007, the announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own postage stamp. The stamp was released in April 2007 as part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.

In April 2013, she was featured in , depicting her performing on stage. It celebrated what would have been her 96th birthday.

On April 25, 2017, the centenary of her birth, UK's broadcast three programmes as part of an "Ella at 100" celebration: Ella Fitzgerald Night introduced by , Remembering Ella introduced by and Ella Fitzgerald – the First Lady of Song introduced by .

In 2019, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things, a documentary by , was launched in the UK. It featured rare footage, radio broadcasts and interviews with Jamie Cullum, Andre Previn, Johnny Mathis, and other musicians, plus a long interview with Fitzgerald's son, Ray Brown Jr.