[scatting]
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♪ I'm going out ♪
♪ I'm gonna rave and shout ♪
♪ I wanna go out, I wanna go out ♪
♪ We're gonna go way out ♪
♪ Way out with the boys ♪
♪ From Ipanema ♪
[scatting]
♪ Fly me to the moon ♪
♪ And let me see What's way up there ♪
♪ Take me to the moon ♪
♪ I wanna go Way, way up there ♪
♪ I wanna see What's up there ♪
♪ Way, way, way, way, way Way up in the moon, yeah ♪
♪ We're gonna do the moonwalk ♪
♪ Got to do the moonwalk ♪
[music fades]
[engine runs]
["If Dreams Come True" by Chick Webb plays]
All the greats came here, everyone.
♪♪
And we went through these doors,
and you were aware you were in Harlem!
Harlem.
[narrator] It was November of 1934
when Norma Miller, who is 100 years old now,
first heard a skinny teenage girl sing.
A shabby street kid entered 'Amateur Night' at the Apollo.
The girl has never sung in public.
She's shaking.
Her dress is dirty.
The audience laughed at her.
[laughter]
They introduced this new girl
called Ella Fitzgerald.
We booed her!
'Cause they were introducing somebody we didn't know.
We were all kids, a bunch of rowdy teenagers in the balcony.
Oh, we were mad anyway. "Boo"!
Say, can you imagine, we booed Ella Fitzgerald?
We went to the Apollo and I was the one that was chosen.
My legs were so skinny, I used to wear boots
so nobody could see the bottom of my legs.
[narrator] She's just 16.
Ella has survived the death of her beloved mother,
a brutal reform school,
and a homeless life in the Harlem streets.
But she's tough. She likes a dare.
And she wants to dance.
At the Apollo, she takes her chances.
[Ella] I was what they called
you know, the greatest little dancer in Yonkers.
And there were two sisters
who were the dancing-est sisters in the world,
called The Edwards Sisters.
And they were starring at the Apollo.
And when I saw those ladies dance,
I said, "No way I'm going out there and try to dance,
'cause they'd stop the show".
-[audience laughs] -[Ella laughs]
The man said, "You're out here", he says, "Well, do something".
And I sang,
♪ If her voice can bring ♪
♪ Every hope of the spring ♪
♪ That's Judy ♪
And everybody says, "Oh, that girl can sing".
-[applause] -[man] Oh, that's funny.
[Ray Brown, Jr.] It was like one of those defining moments
where, "I'm here, I have to do something",
something has to be accomplished.
And to be able to pull out of you, out of yourself,
something that's magical,
you know, that's pretty amazing.
And we heard a sound,
I'm telling you, it was so perfect.
I said, "She shut us up so quick,
you can hear a rat piss on cotton".
That was the story of Ella Fitzgerald.
♪ It was just ♪
♪ One of those things ♪
♪ Just one of those Crazy flings ♪
I was always looking for heroes.
♪ Bells that now and then ring ♪
[Mvula] Icons that looked like me.
♪ Just one of those things ♪
A black woman that was really black.
♪ It was great fun But it was... ♪
[Mvula] She made it seem like anything is possible.
♪ ...those things ♪
There's no other Ella, sorry.
♪ One of those ♪
♪ Things ♪
-[music ends] -[crowd applauds]
["Billie's Blues" by Billy Holiday plays]
[narrator] Ella Fitzgerald's life was always about moving on.
In 1919, when Ella was two,
the family left Virginia for New York.
They joined the Great Migration,
tens of millions of African Americans who fled the racism
and the poverty of the South.
[Margo Jefferson] The Great Migration was bringing
so many people, like Ella's mother,
all with economic dreams,
cultural dreams, social dreams.
The world would have been opening up.
[narrator] Ella's mother, 'Tempie',
settled the family in Yonkers,
a few miles north of Harlem.
[Newscaster] Heart of Harlem,
the largest coloured city in the world,
with a population of 220,000.
[narrator] The action for black teenagers is in Harlem.
From Yonkers, it's only a tram
and a five-cent subway train to get there.
[children clamouring]
♪ Hurry, hurry, hurry ♪
♪ Get, get, get, get Get, get, get, get ♪
♪ Come on ♪
♪ You must take the 'A' train ♪
♪ If you really want to go To Harlem ♪
-[applause] -♪ Come on and take ♪
♪ Take the 'A' train ♪ Thank you.
♪ Find the quickest way To get to Harlem ♪
♪ Hurry, hurry, boy It's comin' ♪
♪ Can't you hear those engines strumming? ♪
♪ All aboard Get on the 'A' train ♪
♪ You'll find the quickest way To get to Harlem ♪
[scatting]
[Gregg Field] The earliest story I have,
from her lips to my ears,
she said she used to dance
on the street corners in Harlem for nickels,
she and her friend Charles.
I wanted to be a dancer, and I ran away from home.
But I got out there and I got hungry
and I was glad to get back home,
and I was glad when my mother whipped me.
I was just so glad to know that I had a home to come to,
a warm bed and, brother, that was it.
[upbeat jazz music]
[Will Friedwald] Ella Fitzgerald is coming into Harlem
when it was the high point
of what we now call the Black Renaissance,
the Harlem Renaissance.
There were all these theatres
and there were fully staged revues.
It was this very unique occurrence
that never really happened anywhere else,
or in any other time.
It was just this incredible flowering
of African-American musical talent that was concentrated
in this very small specific area of just a few blocks.
One of the lovely things about the Renaissance
is this mixture of music.
Okay, so of course you're hearing blues,
of course you're hearing original jazz compositions.
You're also hearing musical theatre,
songs of the day, and those are all in the mix.
["Dinah" by Louis Armstrong plays]
So Ella is taking it in and getting ready to join the swing age.
[Friedwald] All the bands were on the radio.
Duke Ellington made a point to be on the radio,
and Louis Armstrong was all over the airwaves.
♪ Dinah With her Dixie eyes blazin' ♪
♪ Love to sit and gaze in ♪
♪ To the eyes of Dinah Lee ♪
♪ Yet, every night ♪
♪ My, how I shake with fright Oh ♪
♪ 'Cause my Dinah might ♪
♪ Change her mind ♪
[scatting]
[Friedwald] Louis Armstrong is the only major scat singer
before Ella Fitzgerald.
He definitely was a big influence on Ella.
["Girl Crazy: I Got Rhythm" by Fred Rich plays]
[narrator] The Broadway theatres are lit up with new musicals.
Everyone listens to the songs on the radio,
including a teenage Ella.
Everybody calls it to this day the Great American Songbook,
That's Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter,
and all the great ones.
♪ They're writing songs of love ♪
♪ But not for me ♪
[Bennett] All the greatest songs that everybody loves
to this day.
♪ A lucky star's above ♪
Ella is hearing the young composers
whose music she'll be doing in song books years later.
♪ With love to lead the way
[Jefferson] She's hearing Irving Berlin songs,
she's hearing Rodgers and Hart,
she's hearing the wonderful Harold Arlen.
She's hearing all of that
being sung by black singers as well as white.
♪ Than any Russian play ♪
♪ Could guarantee ♪
[Friedwald] And people would think, "Oh, those little
dumb little 'Tin Pan Alley',
'Moon June Spoon' songs,
but this became not only the soundtrack of the 20th Century,
but helped to define it in a sense
that it became the American equivalent of classical music.
You know, where the Europeans have Bach and Beethoven,
we have Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and Duke Ellington.
♪ I guess he's not ♪
♪ For ♪
♪ Me ♪
-[song ends] -[train screeches on rails]
["Harlem Shout" by Jimmie Lunceford plays]
[Miller] I was raised with the jazz age,
so all I ever heard was jazz.
So, it was natural for me.
Me and jazz came up together.
[narrator] For kids like Ella and Norma,
the jazz music and the dancing
are an escape from lives shaped by poverty and racism.
[Miller] Now my mother got two babies,
20 years old, unskilled, never had a job.
You had to find a way of getting money.
You can't work for nobody, 'cause remember,
slavery is over, you don't have jobs.
How do you pay the rent?
My mother used to give house rent parties.
"Norma could dance". She threw me out on the stage
so I can entertain her people
so she can charge for pig feet and potato salad.
And that's how I started in showbiz,
in my mother's living room.
Everything was race.
You couldn't go to Woolworth across the street.
If you were a black person and you wanted to buy a hat,
you couldn't try it on.
They wouldn't have black girls on the cash registers.
You couldn't go out of your zone.
Right up the street was the Cotton Club.
We couldn't go in the Cotton Club.
We could work at the Cotton Club, but you couldn't go in.
So the confinement left you.
What you had to do, you had to do it amongst yourselves.
♪♪
[narrator] Ella told a schoolfriend
"One day, you're gonna see my name in lights".
[music ends]
[slow jazz music]
In 1929, the stock market crashes.
The Great Depression hammers the country for a decade.
Millions are devastated.
By 1932, half of black Americans are out of work.
There are whites who insist black workers are fired,
the whites given their jobs.
For Ella Fitzgerald, there is also personal tragedy.
The big divide in Ella's life
was the tragedy of losing her mother
when she was 13 years old.
She describes her mother in very loving terms,
and kept a picture of her mother in her home.
Tempie was a formidable woman, and it was a devastating blow,
because her mother had been the continuity in her life.
And Ella was lost.
[narrator] Friends said Ella's stepfather neglected her,
and there were rumours of abuse.
Her aunt in Harlem took her in.
Ella, hurt, angry, lost, ran away.
Cops picked her up off the street.
She runs away from home, she's a truant.
She gets caught and does time in a state reformatory for girls.
This is brutal.
It was the combination of reform school cruelties
and the particular abuses and insults
handed out to the young black girls.
[narrator] The Training School for Girls
had begun 30 years earlier
as a home for unwed mothers.
In Ella's time, it's a reformatory for young truants.
Ella is locked up here in 1933, more than 100 miles from home.
Like other black girls, she is beaten by male staff
and held in solitary confinement.
Ella never spoke about it.
A report noted Ella Fitzgerald is "ungovernable"
and "will not obey lawful commands".
She is a "judged delinquent".
Before long, she runs away, back to the streets of Harlem.
She hits the street, sleeping in little nothings,
you know, doing what we see any homeless person doing
under little piles of refuse.
And she wants to be a dancer, which I love.
You know, "I will be a dancer,
even though I'm this unglamorous little critter".
["One O'clock Jump" by Count Basie plays]
[narrator] Ella is back in Harlem.
It's the Apollo's first amateur night.
She takes the gamble.
This is her one shot.
It changes the rest of her life.
-[audience claps] -[music continues]
[applause and music fade]
[Tick] She used to say "I kept on", that is it.
"I kept on".
In the end, once she started, she never stopped.
She lived, she survived, she became famous,
so she kept on keeping on.
At what inner price? We don't know.
["My Wild Irish Rose" by Chick Webb plays]
[Newscaster] Chick Webb, king of the drums!
[narrator] At the Savoy Ballroom,
Chick Webb is Harlem's top bandleader.
Swing is all the rage.
Good time dance music, a break from hard lives.
Chick Webb just had a beat that was like no other.
[drum solo]
He swung his arse off.
Just an incredibly swinging musical drummer and bandleader.
[Friedwald] He really knew how to lead a band
with his personality and with his musicianship.
But he was kind of faded
just because of his physical handicap.
He was, you know, a dwarf and he was a hunchback.
[narrator] One of his musicians tells Chick
he has to hear the girl who won at the Apollo.
The guy says, "She's scuffling on the street".
[Miller] Chick Webb didn't want no girl
travelling with the band, 'cause you've got 16 guys.
He said, "I'm not going to be taking no girl on the road, 16,
and got a bunch of horny guys, I'm not going to have it".
They had to fight to have Ella sing with the band.
[narrator] "I don't want that ugly old thing", Webb says
when he sees Ella wearing a shabby dress
and workman's boots.
You would think that a man with a tubercular spine
might not be so careless
with his put-downs of Ella's looks.
But he gave her a huge start.
There are some people who were born with God-given talent,
and then there are the rest of us.
My mother had God-given talent
and obviously that was the little seed that was planted,
and someone said, "Well, let's help this garden grow".
And so that was Chick, who was a fabulous mentor.
["I'm Just A Jitterbug" by Fitzgerald & Chick Webb plays]
[narrator] Ella joins Chick Webb in early 1935.
Singing with Chick's band gives her a future.
She's on a roll.
[Miller] She wanted to escape the life that she had,
and the way she could escape it was in show business.
♪ I'm just a jitterbug ♪
A naive kid.
♪ A happy jitterbug ♪
She was not cultured, she was not haute couture at all.
She was Ella.
♪ I'm not a corny hick ♪
[scatting]
♪ 'Cause I'm a jitterbug Might glad that I'm alive ♪
♪ Give me a solid ascender ♪
♪ Not just an elbow bender ♪
♪ Don't want no old-time jazz No razzamatazz ♪
♪ Just swing ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm just a jitterbug ♪
♪ A happy jitterbug ♪
♪ A little jitter Jitter jitterbug ♪
♪ Lookin' for a place to jive ♪
[narrator] The audience loves Ella.
She plugs into their excitement and gives it back tenfold.
♪ The trumpet's goin' crazy ♪
Chick knew he had something very special with Ella.
He took her on the road with the band.
Norma Miller and half a dozen Lindy Hoppers
were the opening act.
See, we were the young generation.
She impressed us.
♪ And now a-listen, folks And you will hear ♪
♪ Of the drummer of the band ♪
♪ Now, I know that He's the drummer ♪
♪ By that drumstick in his hand ♪
[drum solo]
[Miller] She was a girl of her time.
It's something amazing about life: your time.
She reached all of us. We were the kids coming up.
♪ Love and kisses never misses ♪
♪ Making a heaven for two ♪
[narrator] Within six months, every band wants her.
She's cutting records,
singing on Benny Goodman's 'Coast to Coast' radio show,
playing nightclubs and ballrooms from Boston to Philly,
Chicago to New Orleans.
[Patti Austin] Guys would finish a show, have a little drink
and they'd bring a big spliff on the bus and they'd all get high.
And Ella never wanted to get high, she didn't do drugs,
and she would always go all the way to the back of the bus.
She would take her coat and put it over her head
and create her own personal filtration system.
[laughs]
So, that's the way she took care of herself.
♪ Mr Paganini, please play my rhapsody, and if... ♪
[narrator] Then, in October 1936,
one of Ella's records became a hit.
♪ You simply have to swing it ♪
♪ I said, "Swing it" ♪
♪ Oh, swing it ♪
[narrator] She recorded "Mr. Paganini" with Chick Webb
when she was 19.
It stayed a favourite in her concerts for decades.
♪ With wild applause ♪
♪ But what a great ovation ♪
[narrator] Chick Webb and his wife looked after Ella,
[scatting]
but she's making her own money.
She has her own room, new clothes, even furs.
A girl on the town, Ella has plenty of admirers,
including one of President Roosevelt's sons.
["A-Tisket A-Tasket" by Ella Fitzgerald plays]
I was trying to remember what was the first song
I ever remember hearing by Ella Fitzgerald.
♪ A-tisket a-tasket
♪ A brown and yellow basket
[Robinson] It was "A-Tisket A-Tasket".
And my sisters used to play that all day long, every day.
"A-Tisket A-Tasket".
"A-Tisket A-Tasket" was her idea,
and it became this blockbuster hit.
♪ Picked it up and put it in her pocket ♪
[narrator] "A-Tisket A-Tasket" went to number one
on the American Hit Parade.
It made Ella a national star,
and it earned her a role in a Hollywood movie.
♪ She was truckin' on down The avenue ♪
♪ With not a single thing to do ♪
♪ She went a-peck, peck Pecking all around ♪
I listened to my voice then,
and it sounds like, well, what I was, a little girl.
♪ A yellow basket and if she... ♪
[Ella] I laugh because my voice was so thin and small.
But I guess it's like anything else, you mature
and I'm grateful for those thin, small, childish voice,
because without that, nothing could have happened.
♪ Oh, dear, I wish That little girl I could see ♪
She was no different from her singing.
She was understated, she was shy, she was like a little girl.
♪ A-tisket a-tasket ♪
♪ Love my little... ♪
♪ My little yellow basket ♪
As Lena Horne famously said,
"After that record, a whole generation of us girl singers
went looking for that damn yellow basket".
[applause]
["Chew, Chew, Chew (Your Bubble Gum)" by Ella Fitzgerald plays]
Yeah!
[narrator] Ella was voted America's number one vocalist.
Just four years after he first met the teenager,
Chick's fortunes were also skyrocketing.
And Chick knew it was because of Ella.
Together, they recorded a string of novelty numbers.
[Newscaster] Ella really goes to town
with "Chew Chew Your Bubble Gum".
♪ Chew, chew, chew, chew Your bubble gum ♪
♪♪
[newscaster's voice fades]
[narrator] But Chick Webb is struggling with health problems.
He was a feisty individual.
He was the meanest...
See, we didn't understand, he was just always mean,
but because he was always in pain.
We just didn't know it.
All those years, his playing, and the back...
It must have been very painful.
Sometimes they had to carry him off the bandstand,
and we just didn't know that.
We said, "What the fuck's wrong with him?" you know.
We didn't have sympathy for Chick
until we saw him in the casket.
[narrator] In the early summer of 1939,
Chick Webb knows he can't hang on much longer,
but he's still concerned about his young singer.
He says to one of his guys,
"Anything happens to me, take care of Ella".
["I Never Knew Heaven Could Speak" by Chick Webb plays]
He died a few days later, aged just 30.
Thousands of mourners lined the streets
for Webb's funeral in Baltimore.
Traffic was halted across the city.
At the church, Chick's body was viewed by crowds of fans.
Ella sings "My Buddy".
["My Buddy" by Ella Fitzgerald plays]
[upbeat jazz music]
[Newscaster] From the home of happy feet,
the famous Savoy Ballroom,
Uptown Harlem along Lenox Avenue,
it's music by Ella Fitzgerald And Her Famous Orchestra.
When Chick Webb died, it was announced as her band.
And I know she wasn't hiring and firing the musicians,
but she was in charge, and she was the leader.
She was the star.
♪ I've paid my tuition For my one ambition ♪
[Cullum] Probably deep within her
was an immense amount of ambition and drive,
which came out entirely in her undeniable singing.
♪ Shall dance with glee ♪
[scatting]
[Cullum] She wasn't dazzling them
with the dress she was wearing, or dancing.
You know, she did it with her voice and her humour and her humanity.
♪ Oh, boy, I'm in the groove ♪
There was particular pressures there that any woman performer
and, most particularly, for black women,
the demands of glamour of sexuality.
All of those were coursing through the culture,
and Ella Fitzgerald did not fit any of those expectations.
["Crazy Rhythm" by Chick Webb plays]
[narrator] From her late teens,
Ella's weight made her miserable.
Reporters called her the 'Plump Chanteuse'.
They laughed when she was trapped in an elevator
and wrote, "220 pounds of songstress hauled out by three men".
[Jefferson] She was probably ashamed
of some of those earlier humiliations and cruelties.
She was made fun of for being not glamorous, for being hefty.
And, coming from a rough life,
could be turned against a performer by the press,
particularly if you were a woman.
♪ Crazy rhythm Here's the doorway ♪
♪ I'll go my way You go your way ♪
♪ Crazy rhythm From now on, we're through ♪
♪ Here is where We have a showdown ♪
♪ I'm too high-hat You're tow low-down ♪
♪ Crazy rhythm It's goodbye to you ♪
♪ I know that when a highbrow Meets a lowbrow ♪
♪ Walking along Broadway ♪
♪ Soon a highbrow He has no brow ♪
♪ Ain't it a shame? And you're to blame ♪
She worked so hard when she was singing that she often sweated.
She's drenched after, like, two songs,
because it involves all of who she is.
♪ Crazy, crazy ♪
[Mvula] There's some real stuff, man.
♪ Crazy ♪
Seeing a woman that looks like my grandma and my aunty in one,
that's, like, the coolest thing.
♪ Give me that rhy-thm ♪
[Mvula] And then she's this pioneer as a musician.
♪ Soon a highbrow he has no brow, ain't it a shame? ♪
She made it seem like anything is possible.
♪ Got rock, we got roll ♪
♪ We want to try To satisfy your soul ♪
♪ We'd like to try To do the kind of song ♪
♪ You know, the kind That you like to hear ♪
♪ Like old song, new song ♪
[Mvula] When you listen to Ella's voice and her music,
there are no limits.
She can go to places
that we can't even imagine,
which, to me, is what is part of the mystery of music making.
[scatting]
♪ Crazy rhythm ♪
There she is, this stocky woman
who looked like she could be a piano teacher
or a librarian or a schoolteacher.
That's not what anyone expected
of the girl who was fronting the Chick Webb Band.
["My Wubba Dolly" by Ella Fitzgerald plays]
[narrator] Those years when Ella had her own band,
some of the guys resented her as the leader.
A few said she was tough,
sometimes downright nasty.
After all, a girl's role was to sing, shut up and sit down.
["Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" by The Andrews Sisters plays]
In December 1941, America entered World War II.
♪ He was a famous trumpet man From out Chicago way ♪
♪ He had a boogie style That no one else could play ♪
[narrator] Many musicians were drafted.
♪ But then his number came up ♪
♪ And he was gone with the draft ♪
♪ He's in the army now ♪
♪ A-blowin' reveille ♪
♪ He's the boogie woogie bugle Boy of Company B ♪
[narrator] Within months, Ella Fitzgerald's
Famous Orchestra disbanded.
Ballads by a soulful young Sinatra
and Glenn Miller's sentimental swing
reflected the subdued mood of a country at war.
[explosions boom]
Ella slipped from the Hit Parade.
Ebony magazine asked, "What is Ella Fitzgerald's style today?"
["Flying Home" by Ella Fitzgerald plays]
[scatting]
She gave her astonishing answer in 1944,
when she embraced the bop revolution.
[scatting]
Fitzgerald's fascination with bebop started in the early '40s,
but now she was ready to plunge in.
[scatting]
The heart of the new music is Minton's Playhouse in Harlem,
where Ella sometimes bopped with the boys.
[trumpet solo]
[Cullum] She hung out with Dizzy Gillespie
for two tours, and two tours later
she was improvising like a bebop musician.
[scatting]
I can sum Ella up in one word...
Wow.
[scatting]
Ella was doing something that hadn't been done before,
and not to that level.
She could solo using her voice
to the same level, with the same ease
that a trumpeter or a saxophonist could.
[scatting]
[giggles]
And I thought, "How is this humanly possible?"
[hums]
It's a feat of nature, it's a freak of nature.
["Sweet Georgia Brown" by Charlie Parker plays]
[narrator] Bop laid new territory for jazz.
The heady cocktail of tearaway tempos and complex new harmonies
blew away the conventions of swing music.
[trumpet solo]
[Jefferson] That speaks to her musical adventurousness
and her performer's awareness
that she had to locate herself on a new and exciting landscape.
It had to feel powerful,
moving from being a girl singer,
you know, to being the woman singer as musician.
[scatting]
That had to be fantastic.
[plays tune]
[narrator] In 1989,
40 years after Ella was hanging out at Minton's,
Kenny Barron would play on her final album.
It was called 'All That Jazz'.
She had great ears, you know.
'Cause sometimes it's not just about
knowing harmony and theory, intellectually,
but it's also about what you can hear.
And great singers have great ears.
Even if they're not learned, they have great ears.
They can hear where you're going and where the music should go.
The beboppers use a harmonic vocabulary that was not known
before Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
[scatting]
And things like "How High The Moon"
were very much informed by the bebop movement.
[scatting]
♪ Somewhere there's heaven ♪
♪ It's where you are ♪
[narrator] Ella Fitzgerald married bass player Ray Brown,
one of the key figures in bebop.
They had fallen in love on tour with Dizzy Gillespie.
♪ Until you will How still my heart ♪
♪ How high the moon ♪
[Cullum] She came into this world with that voice.
She could just sing.
But although her sound and her abilities
were set in stone from the beginning,
she developed hugely as a singer.
♪ How high the moon ♪
♪ Does it touch the stars ♪
[Cullum] She kept up with the boys, there's no question,
and most of the time she outplayed them.
She was improvising bebop like a great bebop musician.
[scatting]
[Friedwald] Ella had this genius way
of incorporating other kinds of songs
into the main body of her scat singing.
It's not just, 'scatty wah, dot, dot, dot'.
Every note she sings is harmonically sound,
it fits within a certain pre-ordinated chord structure.
And when she does these quotes,
they're also from the same chord structure.
And that's the thing that's so genius,
that she could be able to pull that stuff out of the air.
[scatting]
[Mvula] It's that part of singing
that's just the most joyous place to sing from.
You know, skipping through puddles
that could be six feet deep and never sinking.
It's like a rollercoaster ride.
♪ Though the words may be wrong to this song ♪
♪ We hope to make high, high High, high ♪
[Cullum] It's one thing to sing,
it's another thing to improvise singing or scatting,
because you're using a musical language
that is so different to straight singing.
[scatting]
[narrator] During a memorable concert in Berlin in 1960,
Ella explodes with a five minute scat version
of "How High The Moon".
[scatting]
These are the songs that she quotes:
"Poinciana", "Deep Purple",
"Love In Bloom", "Ornithology", "I Cover the Waterfront"...
[scatting]
"The Irish Washerwoman", "Hawaiian War Chant"...
"The Peanut Vendor".
[scatting]
"Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater",
which is another swinging nursery rhyme.
[scatting]
[narrator] Quoting from more than 40 songs,
nursery rhymes, symphonies,
folk tunes, jigs, bop solos, show hits,
a joyous torrent of invention.
"Stormy Weather",
"Yes We Have No Bananas", although in minor,
usually played in major,
a little bit of "Flight of the Bumblebee",
another few notes of "Deep Purple".
"Did You Ever See A Dream Walking".
"Got To Be This Or That",
which was a novelty song from about 1946.
A few notes of the "Rhapsody in Blue". "Idaho".
♪ I guess these people wonder What I'm singing ♪
After that there's "A-Tisket A-Tasket".
♪ Dream walking Well, I did ♪
♪ A-tisket a-tasket I lost my yellow basket ♪
♪ Guess I'd better quit While I'm ahead ♪
And then she ends the scat with "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes".
♪ They ask me how I knew My true love was true ♪
She sings "as sweat gets in my eyes",
because by that point she's really perspiring.
♪ Sweat gets in my eyes ♪
♪ High, high, high, high, high ♪
♪ Is the moon ♪
[Friedwald] Her mind just went from one song to another.
What kind of a catalogue do you have in your head to do that?
I can't even begin to think about that.
And again, in the '70s,
right here on this stage at Ronnie Scott's.
♪ No girl made has got a shade On sweet Georgia Brown ♪
♪ Two left feet ♪
[Cullum] The way she plays
with that ancient song, "Sweet Georgia Brown",
it swings so hard.
That's the other thing about her.
Her sense of swing, it makes you do that swing face.
It's like it almost hurts you it swings so hard.
♪ No gal, not a gal ♪
♪ Got a shade on Georgia Brown ♪
♪ Two feet, so neat ♪
♪ Hey, that Georgia Brown ♪
♪ They sigh, and want to cry ♪
♪ For Georgia Brown ♪
♪ Listen, while I tell ya ♪
♪ You know, you know, you know, you know ♪
♪ You know I don't lie ♪
[Cullum] You can't help but be reeled in
by that level of joy and excellence.
It's one of the reasons
it's worth being on this planet, right?
[chuckles]
["Miss Blandish" by John Scott plays]
[narrator] From 1947,
Herman Leonard began documenting jazz,
and especially the rise of bebop.
He photographed Ella, and their friendship
produced some of her most lasting images.
♪♪
Ella adored children.
She had always wanted kids, but she couldn't have her own.
In 1949, Ray and Ella adopted her half-sister's infant son.
They called him Ray Junior.
I grew up in this business
seeing people who had huge careers
and they all had one thing in common,
they all had very screwed up private lives
because they all led that dual existence.
[narrator] Ella and her husband struggled
to reconcile a non-stop touring schedule with their marriage.
I saw the collateral damage from women in the business
who had said, "I'm going to have a career
and I'll be back in a minute", to the kids,
and "I'll be back in a couple of weeks", to the husband.
And after a while, it's like,
"Who's this woman coming into our house?"
[narrator] By 1953, Ray and Ella were divorced,
but they never stopped playing and touring together.
[Cleo Laine] When I first met her,
I think her marriage had broken up with Ray
and she never seemed to have a strong love life in her life.
It gives you strength,
when you've got a bloke that will support you.
You always need a bloke to support you.
In 1941, when I started Jazz at the Philharmonic,
I used many of the musicians from the Chick Webb Orchestra,
that was then led by Ella Fitzgerald.
To show you how bad my taste was,
I used everyone in the orchestra but the singer.
And so now I'd like to correct that
and introduce the best singer there is in jazz today,
the great Ella Fitzgerald.
-[band plays] -[audience applauds]
Thank you.
♪ Love ♪
♪ For sale ♪
♪ Advertising young love ♪
♪ For sale ♪
[narrator] Ella's life and her music
took another new direction in the 1950s.
It brought her international acclaim and enduring fame.
Her new manager, Norman Granz,
was determined to take her out of the little jazz clubs
and on to the world's great concert stages.
♪ A foggy day ♪
♪ In London town ♪
Had me low, had me down ♪
♪ I viewed the morning ♪
[narrator] Granz matched Ella's voice
with the music of the Great American Songbook.
♪ The weather is frightening ♪
♪ The thunder and lightning Seem to be having their way ♪
♪ But as far as I'm concerned ♪
♪ It's a lovely day ♪
[narrator] The records are the heart of Granz' new Verve label,
that he'd created for Ella.
♪ A fine romance ♪
♪ With no kisses ♪
[narrator] An affluent post-war America can afford the new LPs
and the hi-fis to play them on.
[Field] Norman Granz had this idea
to have her do these Songbook albums,
which were sophisticated records with orchestras.
It wasn't "A-Tisket A-Tasket" or "When I Get Low I Get High".
It wasn't novelty tunes,
it was her as a more mature woman, as a more mature artist,
and now reinventing herself.
So, Norman Granz is responsible for that.
♪ Every time ♪
♪ We say goodbye ♪
♪ I die a little ♪
[Ella] First I thought, I said,
"My gosh, what is Norman doing?
He's taking me away from my jazz
and who wants to listen to me singing this?"
♪ Heaven, I'm in heaven ♪
♪ And my heart beats So that I can hardly speak ♪
But it was funny, I just gained oh so many fans all over the world,
so it was like a new beginning.
♪ Let's do it ♪
♪ Let's fall in love ♪
[George Wein] Norman Granz took Ella out of the jazz clubs
and put her in the world of the American Songbook.
And he took her out of "A-Tisket A-Tasket" world
into another world.
♪ There is nothing for me ♪
♪ But to love you ♪
I liked Ella when she sang ballads, I must say, very much.
I found them very touching, very moving,
and I thought she knew what she was talking about.
♪ Just the way you look ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
[Friedwald] Norman seized that moment,
using not only the definitive songwriters,
but Ella Fitzgerald, who he realised
was the definitive interpreter
of that music, and helped to establish her as that
with these great Songbook packages.
♪ It's very fancy ♪
♪ On old Delancey Street You know ♪
People did not take these songs seriously before Ella,
they just thought that they were ephemeral.
♪ When Broadway breezes blow ♪
♪ To and fro ♪
[Friedwald] But for Norman and Ella, to come along and preserve these songs
and say, "This is what Americans should be proud of
and this is the way to present them",
was really a radical move.
♪ Gliding by ♪
To think that this girl that sang "A-Tisket A-Tasket",
20 years after that, was making the definitive Songbook
of George Gershwin, of Richard Rodgers, of Jerome Kern,
and the one who would be taking jazz and the American Songbook
to Berlin, to Helsinki, to Tokyo.
You know, to think that she would go from that beginning
to be the one who defined the Songbook,
to me, is just miraculous.
♪ We'll go to Coney And eat baloney ♪
[narrator] Ella's Songbooks confirmed her as a superstar.
♪ In Central Park we'll stroll ♪
♪ Where our first kiss we stole ♪
[narrator] But the reluctance of music promoters
and TV and radio producers to book black artists
remained a frustration for both Granz and Fitzgerald.
♪ We both may see it close ♪
♪ Someday ♪
♪ The city's clamour Can never spoil ♪
♪ The dreams of a boy and goil ♪
I got that line right.
♪ We'll turn Manhattan ♪
♪ Into an isle of joy ♪
-[song ends] -[applause and cheers]
[narrator] Fancy nightclubs were also unwilling
to offend white customers by booking black stars.
[Friedwald] Norman Granz was trying to get her booked
in these high class,
very, very white upper-crusty Hollywood establishments.
And at that point they were very hesitant
to hire African Americans.
♪ You're just too marvellous ♪
♪ Too marvellous for words ♪
[Austin] Marilyn Monroe loved Ella Fitzgerald,
and said, "Whatever you need, however I can help you,
I am going to do that".
And she went to the owner at a club,
she said, "If you don't open these doors to everybody,
I'll make sure nobody shows up".
And she came to the club every night,
and half the reason people showed up
was because Marilyn Monroe is sitting in the front row going,
[whistles, then laughs]
"Yo, Ella!"
♪ And so I'm borrowing ♪
♪ A love song from the birds ♪
♪ To tell you that You're marvellous ♪
♪ Too marvelous for words ♪
[narrator] But in the South,
Fitzgerald and Granz faced the harsh realities of racism.
One night, there were three Houston detectives
who said they wanted to be backstage,
and ended up busting into Ella's dressing room.
[Ella] Somebody was shooting dice and I got arrested.
And they took me to the jail.
And they took all of us to the jail, right.
[Hershon] The detective pulled a gun on Norman
and said, "I ought to shoot you".
Norman said, "I'll cancel this show,
and that's 2,000 people".
"That's your problem, you deal with that".
But he'd been pushing it from the very beginning
when he came in the afternoon of the concert
and personally took down the 'white' and 'coloured' signs
from the doors.
[Ella] It was so funny, they wouldn't want us
to go in a restaurant or have something to eat.
And yet, the moment I walked in to jail,
they were all asking for my autograph.
[Hershon] By the time they got down to the station,
the press was there.
He just knew that yes, this really was a set-up,
and ended up suing the police department to get the bail back.
If you messed with Norman Granz, you swallowed the hook whole.
[crowd applauds]
[narrator] Ella Fitzgerald joined Norman Granz
and his musicians on long international tours
under the banner Jazz at the Philharmonic.
And now Miss Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, Oscar Peterson,
the rest of the show combined to give you a jazz classic
called "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing".
[music begins]
[narrator] JATP was celebrated for its uproarious jam sessions,
sometimes dismissed by purists as a circus.
♪ It don't mean a thing ♪
♪ If you ain't got that swing ♪
[scatting]
♪ It don't mean a thing ♪
[narrator] Ella was an essential presence,
bringing her Songbook ballads
-and up-tempo scat to the mix. -[crowd chatter]
♪ It makes no difference if it's sweet or hot ♪
[Ella] We travel, almost...
Every day we're playing a different country or city.
Sometimes we play two cities a day.
[scatting]
[narrator] Norman Granz was always obsessed
with his jazz concerts
as a way of fighting prejudice.
He called JATP "a race blind democracy of talent".
[scatting]
As a character, Norman Granz was a righteous man.
He really saw evils of segregation and was determined
to campaign against segregation within jazz music.
[scatting]
[Friedwald] When Granz emerges and says,
"I believe in equality,
I believe that black musicians and white musicians
should be equally presented.
They should be able to stay in the same hotels,
they should be able to share the same bandstand".
It's not only radical in the period,
but it certainly earned some of the respect
of a lot of musicians, both black and white.
Norman Granz produced the very first tour I did to Europe,
I was with Dizzy at the time.
But one of the things that Norman did there was,
mid-way through the tour he gave all sidemen a $100 bill,
which was a lot of money then.
And he said, "Look, this is just
for being on time and doing your job".
Which I thought was great.
[narrator] The relationship between Norman Granz
and Ella Fitzgerald wasn't always easy.
He was dictating many of her music choices,
but his urge to control could be stifling.
[Field] Norman, whenever he was around either Basie or Ella,
he would tell them, "You're gonna open with this,
you're gonna do this, you're gonna play this".
He was almost like Svengali.
[Wein] Norman could be nasty
and control was his total direction in life,
to control his world.
[Field] Frank Sinatra was talking to Ella ,
and Norman Granz comes up and starts telling Frank
what he thinks Frank should open with,
and Frank had him thrown out of the theatre.
Norman was a proud guy, and at that point he said,
"OK, Ella Fitzgerald doesn't work with Frank Sinatra anymore".
[narrator] But always, Ella remained Ella.
[Hershon] Norman Granz was a voluminous collector of Picasso.
He also knew Picasso, hung with Picasso.
And he asked Ella if she would like to go and meet Picasso
and she said, "No, I'm darning socks this afternoon".
♪ All you've gotta do is swing ♪
[Brown Jr.] He did his job.
He had a goal in mind.
He was focused on that goal,
and they reached that goal together.
So, it was a good marriage in that way.
[Newscaster] One of the all-time greats of popular music
is a wonderful lady by the name of Ella Fitzgerald.
In between her tours, Ella Fitzgerald and her son
live in this house on a quiet street
in Los Angeles, California.
-Hello, Ella. -Hi, Charles.
[narrator] It was the 1950s.
Beverly Hills was not happy
about African Americans moving in.
Ella was a global star,
but Norman Granz had to buy her house in his name.
[Newscaster] I know how busy you are,
I'm glad we caught you between tours.
Thank you. Yes, you're right when you say between tours.
We just finished a 6-weeks tour in Europe
and we're about ready to go to South America for 6 weeks.
[Newscaster] With your schedule, it sounds to me
as though you don't get to spend much time
at home here in California.
I wish I could. Unfortunately I don't, Charles.
But I would love to, especially because of my son.
Here's my son, Raymond Brown Jr.
[Newscaster] Ray, are you planning a career in music
like your mother or haven't you decided yet?
Well, I like piano, but I think I'd rather be a baseball player.
[Brown Jr.] Musicians that my mother worked with
would let me play their horns or play drums.
Yeah, there are some really, really nice moments.
Roy Eldridge used to let me play his trumpet.
We went to Basie's house,
and he had this huge table with a train set on it,
and it was just spectacular.
[mimics train engine chugging]
Occasionally, my mum would call me out on stage
and we'd dance together on stage.
I loved my mum.
We had the usual turmoils that go on in family life.
I can remember having those moments
when I was very upset with my mother, and I ran up to my room.
And I had my little turntable,
and I would put on The Who's "My Generation".
I'd just crank it as loud as I could
'cause that's how I felt about it.
[grunts] Yeah.
There was a couple that she had hired,
Chester and Juanita Matlock,
and it was Chester's job
to keep me on the straight and narrow.
At some point, they told my mother
that I needed a little more discipline in my life.
And so they recommended a Catholic military school.
The joy of getting up every morning and going to Mass,
I got to fight every day with my fellow classmates.
Marching, fight time.
I tried out for the orchestra,
and they said, "What do you wanna play?"
I said, "I wanna play trumpet".
So the band master looked at me and he said,
"Well, you can't play trumpet, your lips are too big".
So they gave me a trombone.
Because you have such long periods of being apart,
and who knows how long it'll be before you see each other again,
there are times that's lonely and I think music really helps.
It's something that helps settle the heart.
♪ I could cry salty tears ♪
♪ Where have I been ♪
♪ All these years? ♪
♪ Little wow ♪
♪ Tell me now ♪
♪ How long has this Been going on? ♪
["A House Is Not A Home" by Ella Fitzgerald plays]
[Ella] Now my son is at the age where I would really like
to spend a little more time at home.
And I am a woman, and you do get lonesome.
And I don't care how much singing you do,
and I don't care how much audience you have,
there are times when you go home, it's kinda lonesome
without that one person that you could tell those troubles to.
Someone that you just feel you can say something to them,
the little intimate things that you
wouldn't think of saying to anyone else.
I've got this big house,
but a house isn't a house without a man.
♪ A chair is still a chair ♪
♪ Even when there's no one ♪
♪ Sitting there ♪
[Ella] I love my work.
I guess that's one reason why I haven't gotten married again,
because I don't think I would ever want
to really just stop singing altogether.
It would have to be someone that realised I love what I'm doing.
♪ And no one there you can kiss ♪
♪ Goodnight ♪
I would have to maybe cut the jobs down and be a housewife,
because I think it can be done.
And if you don't have that experience,
life just doesn't mean anything.
A woman's got to have that kind of experience.
I miss it now more and more, and as I see my son grow up,
I realise that I want to spend more time at home.
♪ And a house is not a home ♪
♪ When the two of us Are far apart ♪
♪ And one of us ♪
♪ Has a broken heart ♪
I just love to sing,
I don't know, I just feel that if I couldn't sing,
I don't know what I would do.
♪ And suddenly your face appears ♪
As soon as I have had that first week off,
I'm ready to hit the road again. It's like well, gee,
that's part of my family.
I've got to get out to see how my family's doing.
♪ It's so nice to have a man ♪
♪ Moon round the house ♪
♪ It's so nice ♪
♪ To have a man Around the house ♪
♪ I'm not meant to live alone ♪
♪ Turn this house into a home ♪
♪ When I climb the stairs ♪
♪ And turn the key ♪
♪ Oh, please be there ♪
♪ Still in love with ♪
♪ Me ♪
♪ A house is not a home ♪
♪ A home is not a house ♪
♪ A house is not a home And a home is not a house ♪
♪ Without a man ♪
[crowd applauds]
[Ella] Thank you.
We'd like to do something for you now.
We haven't heard a girl sing it, and since it's so popular,
we'd like to try it and do it for you.
We hope we remember all the words.
[Wein] Well, Ella was a road rat.
You know, if she wasn't working what was she was doing?
She was sitting home alone.
I don't think Ella could ever stay home,
and do the cooking for a man.
I think she would prefer to sing for a man.
[Wein] She was always in a rush to go somewhere.
That's when she was happiest:
in front of people screaming out, "We love you Ella".
I think that meant everything to her.
♪ Oh, the shark has ♪
♪ Pearly teeth, dear ♪
♪ And he shows them Pearly white ♪
[narrator] For decades, from the late 1950s,
Ella embarked on an endless series of concert tours,
performing in dozens of countries around the world,
from Germany to Brazil and Japan.
♪ Oh, the shark bites ♪
♪ With its teeth, dear ♪
[Friedwald] One concert was in Berlin in 1960,
and it was a year before the Wall went up,
and this was as far at the boundaries of the Soviet Union
as a major American artist had come.
♪ So there's not Not a trace of red ♪
[narrator] Norman Granz suggested
Ella should try a recent Bobby Darin hit, "Mack the Knife".
♪ Round the corner Tell me, could it be ♪
[Hershon] She said she was going to do it,
but she wasn't sure she remembered all the lyrics.
♪ Oh, what's the next chorus ♪
♪ To this song now? ♪
♪ This is the one now I don't know ♪
♪ But it was the swinging tune ♪
♪ And it's a hit tune ♪
♪ So we tried to do "Mack The Knife" ♪
♪ Ah, Louis Miller ♪
♪ Oh, somethin' 'bout cash ♪
♪ Yeah, Miller ♪
♪ He was spendin' that trash ♪
[Friedwald] The way she covers up
forgetting the words was just so brilliant
and so inventive and innovative that it didn't matter.
♪ Yes, we sung it ♪
[Friedwald] It worked brilliantly.
♪ You won't recognise it ♪
♪ It's a surprise tune ♪
♪ We told you look out Look out, look out ♪
♪ Old Macheath's back in town ♪
[crowd shrieks]
[Newscaster] There's a super-charged atmosphere,
lots of racial antagonism flared into violence.
Firemen turned their hoses on the angry crowd.
Police dogs were brought in to disperse shouting Negros.
[narrator] The civil rights struggles of the early 1960s
became the background to Ella Fitzgerald's overseas tours.
[Ella] Travelling, you'll be surprised at things
that people in other countries say
when they read the papers about it,
"My gosh, what is this going on?"
And you feel embarrassed, really you do,
because you say, "Well, gee, what can you say?"
What can you say? There's nothing, and it's really pitiful.
[narrator] During a radio interview in 1963
with Fred Robbins,
a prominent radio show host and trusted friend,
Ella surprisingly spoke out about prejudice in America.
[police siren blares]
[Ella] Maybe I'm stepping out,
but I have to say because it's in my heart,
but it makes you feel so bad to think
that we can't go down to certain parts of the South
and give a concert like we do overseas,
and have everybody just come to hear the music and enjoy the music,
because of the prejudice thing that's going on.
[sombre music]
I used to always like to clam up, because you say,
"Well, gee, show people should stay out of politics".
But we have travelled so much and been embarrassed so much.
They can't understand why we don't play in Alabama, "You don't play there.
Why can't you have a concert? Music is music".
She never made a political statement
except the one that I heard her say was only three words,
and it was the most complete definition
of the ignorance of the world
in the way they treat African Americans.
She said, "Tony, we're all here".
In three words, she said the whole thing.
[sombre piano music]
[Ella] The diehards, they're going to just die hard,
they're not going to give in.
And then you've got to try to convince the younger ones,
they're the ones that have got to make the future.
And those are the ones we gotta worry about, not those diehards.
[sombre piano music]
I really ran my mouth.
-[Robbins] Really? -Where does this go?
[Robbins] This goes all over the world.
-[Ella] It does? -[Robbins] Yes, it does.
-[Ella] Is it going down... -It's going down South, too.
[Ella] You think they're gonna break my records up when they hear it?
-[Ella laughs] -[Robbins] No, they won't.
[Ella] This is unusual for me,
but I'm so happy that you had me,
because instead of singing, for a change,
I got the chance to get a few things off my chest.
I'm just a human being.
[narrator] The interview was never broadcast.
[Robinson] Back in the day when Ella was coming up,
it had to be horrible.
I've been through horror.
I've been through the Civil Rights Movement,
I was there for that, the sit-ins and the marching, and the this and the that.
Going and sitting at the counter in the restaurants,
where, first of all, they didn't want you to come in there.
You sit there for an hour, an hour and a half
before somebody would come and say, "We wish you would leave".
We were travelling in the South many times.
We couldn't stay at any of the major hotels.
Gosh, and this is in the '60s and the '70s.
We couldn't stay in the major hotels.
We had to go to the black side of town and stay in...
They had rooming houses over there.
But artists like Ella fought that fight
to break down those doors and break down those barriers
for people like me.
Race was obviously something that we lived with,
continue to live with.
♪ That's why the lady is a tramp ♪
♪ Doesn't dig dice games With barons and earls ♪
♪ I won't go to Harlem In ermine and pearls ♪
♪ She won't dish the dirt With the rest of those girls ♪
♪ That's why the lady is a tramp ♪
♪ I love the free, fresh wind In my hair ♪
♪ Life without care ♪
♪ I'm broke ♪
♪ That's OK ♪
♪ Sweet, lovely lady, be good ♪
♪ Oh, lady, be good to me ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm So awfully misunderstood ♪
♪ Oh, lady, oh lady, Oh, lady, be good to me ♪
[narrator] Ella was the First Lady of Song.
Loved, admired, respected by audiences and musicians.
♪ Oh, lady, oh lady, Oh, lady, be good to me ♪
[scatting]
♪ I'm so lonesome today ♪
♪ And so, lady, oh, lady, lady Won't you be so good to me? ♪
♪ Please, please ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[audience applauds]
[Jefferson] Ella had her own sorrows, her own troubles,
and she had found her own way to master suffering,
unhappiness, grief, shame and make it something else.
And one of those things is joy.
[audience cheering]
[narrator] She had been singing for 60 years.
"The kids call me 'Mama Jazz'" she said, "that's so cute".
The thing about Ella is, like, perfection, great artistry.
Thank you.
There's only one thing that you cannot teach,
and that's that certain magic.
You cannot teach magic. You can't.
And then when Ella turns a phrase, that's magic.
♪ He'll look at me and smile ♪
♪ And I will understand ♪
♪ And in a little while You'll take my hand ♪
[narrator] Ella's punishing tour schedule
kept her on the road in to her seventh decade.
[Jim Blackman] Paul Smith, the pianist, one time he told me
she had worked something like 48 weeks out of 52.
He said he and Stan Levy, who at the time was the drummer,
after that last concert they took their tuxedos,
ripped them up and threw them in the garbage can.
And they had had it.
♪ He'll build a little home ♪
♪ Just meant for two ♪
[narrator] One more tour in the mid-'80s
seemed to be the end of the road for Ella.
[Field] We were on the road with Ella,
we had been out for 12 days, four concerts.
And I'm checking out of the Hilton in Niagara Falls
and the elevator doors open up, and Ella is standing there,
grasping her chest,
holding on to her road manager, Pete,
saying, "I can't catch my breath".
She was having congestive heart failure.
["The Man I Love" by Ella Fitzgerald]
We're coming up to Ella's house right now.
[narrator] Jim Blackman
fell in love with Ella Fitzgerald's music
when he was 15.
For half a century, he was her most loyal fan.
He became her trusted friend and her final road manager.
[Blackman] She knew I was honest with her.
She knew that she could trust me.
After her operation in '86,
when they thought she wouldn't be able to sing again,
Ella wanted to rehearse.
She was raring to go three months later.
♪ The way you wear your hat ♪
♪ The way you sip your tea ♪
[Bennett] I met her at the airport,
and this was a time when her doctor was saying,
"Ella, don't travel".
♪ They can't take that Away from me ♪
[Bennett] I said, "Where are you going?"
She said, "I can't wait,
I'm going to do a date".
She loved the audience, she loved to perform that much
that thousands of miles away from where she was going,
she couldn't wait to get on that stage
to get that audience and give them the time of their life.
♪ They can't take that away ♪
♪ Away ♪
♪ Can't take that away from me ♪
-[music ends] -[audience applauds]
Thank you.
[Blackman] When she'd do a concert
people would be screaming at the end
and then she'd come off and say "Do you think they liked me?"
[audience applauds]
I mean, the woman was a genius who had no idea,
no idea of her own genius. None.
[audience screams and applauds]
[Brown Jr.] People truly loved her.
I was in Ukraine doing a concert.
It was cold, I mean it was cold.
We ran out of the venue and we got on the bus.
The windows were all frosted over.
[taps on table]
And this man, standing outside the bus,
says, "I loved your mother, she was so wonderful".
He had these flowers and he wanted to give them to me.
[sighs]
[audience cheers and applauds]
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.
And I'm so proud to be in class
with all of these younger ones coming up.
They ain't going to leave me behind, I'm learning how to rap.
[audience laughs]
Every now and then I said, "I'm thinking about coming back".
She says, "I'll believe it when I see it". You know.
So, I didn't come back until I found out
that she was seriously ill.
[indistinct chatter]
[sombre piano music]
Of course, the dynamics in our lives had changed tremendously.
But to see grace like you'd never seen before,
in someone who knows they have a limited lifespan...
-Did you say "thank you"? -Thank you.
...to see the way that they deal with people every day,
You want one, too?
and to see such kindness...
it was amazing.
Aww, you gave it to me.
Turn around, Daddy is taking your picture.
[man] We've got to get a picture. Alright, yeah.
[Ella] Okay, now let me get in here.
[man] You've got to get in there, too.
[woman] Curtis, open your eyes!
You'd see a little baby, 'cause she loved kids,
and then she'd just go, "How you doing, my little..."
and she'd just start singing to the baby.
♪ Your daddy's rich ♪
♪ And your ma is good lookin' ♪
♪ So hush, little baby ♪
♪ Baby, don't ♪
♪ You cry ♪
[Brown Jr.] I remember the funeral.
And I'd got all changed,
and I had to go to the grocery store.
I'm in the grocery store.
and what comes on?
Her music.
♪ I could cry ♪
♪ Salty tears ♪
♪ Where have I been ♪
♪ All these years? ♪
♪ Little wow, tell me now ♪
♪ How long has this been Occurrin'? ♪
♪ How long has this ♪
♪ Been going ♪
♪ On? ♪
-[music ends] -[audience applauds]
[applause fades]
[Alexis Morrast] Everything comes back around.
The way that Ella was reserved,
and the way she was poised and passionate,
you could never tell what her feelings were
until she got to the music.
And then it was always happiness and joy,
and everything else that you could have ever hoped for.
♪ A-tisket a-tasket ♪
♪ A brown and yellow basket ♪
♪ I sent a letter to my mummy ♪
♪ And on the way I dropped it ♪
♪ I dropped it, I dropped it ♪
♪ My little yellow basket ♪
♪ A little girly She picked it up ♪
♪ And put it in her pocket ♪
♪ Oh, gee, I wonder where my basket could be ♪
♪ So do we, so do we So do we, so do we, so do we ♪
♪ Oh, why was I so careless With that basket of mine? ♪
♪ That itty-bitty basket ♪
♪ Was a joy of mine ♪
♪ A-tisket a-tasket ♪
♪ I lost my yellow basket ♪
♪ Oh, can somebody Help me find it ♪
♪ And make me happy again, again ♪
♪ Was it red? No, no, no, no ♪
♪ Was it blue? No, no, no, no ♪
♪ Was it green? No, no, no, no ♪
♪ My little yellow basket ♪