Everywhere I go, when I meet new people and they find out what I do, they start telling me their very own Ella Fitzgerald stories. From the deli guy at the market who knew just how she liked her tuna salad (easy on the mayo) to the librarian at the local elementary school who saw her in concert forty years ago. We all love these stories, and if you have one you'd like to tell, please email it to us and we'll share it here with all of you who have been touched by Ella and her magical voice.
As all you music-lovers out there know, Ella won a lot of awards for singing great tunes from the “Great American Songbook”. Recently, a wonderful author named David Lehman wrote a book about these well-loved American standards; and in his book (A Fine Romance, Schocken Publishers), he mentions Ella many times. So I contacted him and found – to my happiness – that he’s a huge Ella fan, too!
He has given us permission to share the poem he wrote when he heard that Miss Fitzgerald had passed away. It’s from: The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (David Lehman, Scribner, 2000).
PS: You can find David Lehman’s books and poetry over at amazon.com
Ella Fitzgerald died
and I haven’t had a minute to cry
about it but I listened to her
driving here and I’ll be listening to her
driving back home I’ll play
the Irving Berlin Songbook and then
Rodgers and Hart, “The Lady is a Tramp,”
but not this lady Ira Gershwin said
“I never knew how good our songs were
until I hear Ella Fitzgerald sing them”
the queen of scat oh Ella I hope
you and Billie Holiday are comparing
notes in heaven right now
while I am back on earth hearing you sing
“It Was Just One of Those Things”
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