“It isn't where you came from, its where you're going that counts.” – Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald was a very, if not the most influential musician this world has seen. It is hard to escape ones singing being compared to her voice. Singers these days, especially if they sing jazz or blues will model themselves after Ella. She has inspired many people with her voice.
Ella was born in Virginia, in 1917. She loved music and dance from a very early age, from listening to Louis Armstrong and the like. Her mother died in a car crash when Ella was fifteen and she had a hard time dealing with this. After some trouble with authority and struggles with an abusive stepfather she was moved to a Colored Orphan Asylum. Than she was moved to a reformatory in New York, escaped, and lived homeless for a while.
Through all these hardships Ella continued to sing, and eventually made her debut at the age of seventeen in New York. She then went on to sell at least two hundred albums and be one of the most influential singers. I chose Ella Fitzgerald because throughout all of the struggles she had to face, not only as an African American woman, but also as an orphan, she still held her head up high and pulled through with a voice that broke through the doldrums of inequality in the 20’s.
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