Ella Fitzgerald
Day 49
#21 – Ella Jane Fitzgerald (1917–1996), also known as the ‘First Lady of Song’, ‘Queen of Jazz’ and ‘Lady Ella’. American jazz and song vocalist. Recordings include the albums: Ella Fitzgerald: Pure Ella (1950-54), Ella Fitzgerald – Sings The Cole Porter Songbook (1956) and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis (1957).
Fitzgerald was a brilliant scat singer – vocal improvisation, wordless with nonsense syllables. One recording which includes this is from 1960, at the peak of her powers, where Fitzgerald did a concert in Berlin. It included a version of ‘Mack the Knife’, in which she forgot the words and made up her own. A wonderful recording and great fun. It is so unusual I thought it would be good to use the words in some way. Listening to the recording I selected the lines she made up and used this as a background. The song has a great upbeat swinging sound and I looked at typefaces that could express this sound. Lively, flowing, personal. On top of this I put ‘ella’. Such a distinctive but recognised name that it worked on its own. I looked at playing with the letters, turning ‘e’ upside down to make an ‘a’ but it was much simpler to just write the name.
3 hours
Listen...
to excerpts from ‘Mack The Knife’