Ella Fitzgerald - why is her voice so lovely to listen to?

You're so right, OP.

Who, as a pop vocalist, male or female, is better than Ella? No one comes close imho. Happy listening.

There's definitely a warmth and profound vulnerability to her voice. Perhaps not to the raw, fragile extent of Billie Holiday's, but no less compelling. She sang and phrased effortlessly like a horn player.

Ella also managed to bring a wistful lightness to even those heartbreaking ballads, that she often gently swung. In private, she led a very difficult, largely unhappy life. Love evaded her. And yet she sings of it so believably and soulfully, you'd think she'd have all the luck of it in the world.

She was a once in a lifetime talent. And she had such joy performing live too...something that a lot of contemporary female jazz singers sorely LACK.

I love her and Count Basie...

I'll also add that there's an inherent "sweetness" to Ella's tone in ALL her work. While it really makes those happy, uptempo tunes POP, it adds a real bittersweetness to those tender ballads.

R3, I also love that Basie album arranged by Quincy Jones. Very underrated and so swinging. Dee Dee Bridgewater actually covers that track on YouTube and does Ella proud (talk about a lady who knows how to enjoy herself on stage!)

Cue the "Ella usually sounded like she was looking for change in her purse" anecdote troll.

I saw her at the Hollywood bowl when she was quite elderly and her voice was outstanding...definitely one of the greats.

I think her "loveliness" is found in her humility. She almost always made herself subservient to the song. She wasn't constantly exuding personality through bravura choices, the way dear Sarah Vaughan did. Ella served the song, which is why people like her composer song books so much. Except when she's riffing, scatting, getting down or jamming, or doing her early playful stuff, the joy of which was a thing in itself, she aimed more for definitive versions in a standard style. If you want to listen to what a composer intended done with intelligence and care, you go to Ella.

What Ella could do in this vein shows with "It's Only a Paper Moon," just as her creative jazz licks show in "It Don't Mean a Think if It Ain't Got That Swing." She always was wholesome, either way. Here's a short rendition of the latter, from Ed Sullivan and with Duke Ellington.

Ella said that much of her phrasing and foundation started with listening to Connee Boswell. LOVE her and the Boswell Sisters, even if they can come across a little plantation-happy at time (considering she was from Kansas City). Different times and always respectful.

Her voice is perfectly placed, always pretty, and dull.

I stumbled on this and couldn't believe how good it was.

You said what I was thinking. There is a bell tone quality to her singing.

What struck me, as a musician, is her skill at hitting every note on pitch. She never had to adjust a note because it was too high or too low. She got the rhythm and the right swing on each so perfectly. And that girl was truly the queen of scat.

One of my favorite commercials as a kid was the one where she would shatter glass.

I always loved her, and although i am not a music connoisseur i have a couple of friends who are amd they agree there is no one like her.

That said, there are a couple of musics, mostly romantic hardcore, where she does not fully provide the required sentiment and are almost too cheerful (conversely Billie Holiday). But these are few.

I love all her songbook albums.

Sarah Vaughan is the only singer that I think is comparable. Sassy had a bit more range, but both singers were truly able to embody their performances. You felt them.

Anita O'Day was better. Fact!

I always enjoy how MATURE her voice sounds. Grounded, wise, very "even".

My favorite singer. God, music was really good back in the day.

[quote]And that girl was truly the queen of scat.

I beg to differ!

I agree with you R15. Sarah had the soul in her singing. Totally different from Ella. The darker timbre in her voice made it perfect for ballads. Both of them had most of their career behind them before I was born, both my mom and dad were big fans of Ella and Sarah and passed their love of these singers to my brother and me.

Ella's music is a shorthand in movies and TV to communicate sophistication and class. It's no accident that "sex and the city" used her version of "Blue Skies" over and over.

I was lucky enough to see her live in a smaller concert venue when she was past her prime but she could still sing circles around most anyone today. No autotune or loud background music to hide any flaws, just Ella!

The Ella and Louie album(s) are just great. Their voices made such a perfect counterpoint.

/Louis

Ella was the best of the best, bringing both a girlishness and depth to the perfect songs of her era. I recently discovered the marvelous Helen Humes who eerily captures so much of the youthful Ella's sweetness, lightness, and purity, even as an older woman.

Vaughn was single malt scotch. Ella was champagne.

Re: comment that she sounded wise and mature: actually I thought a quality of her voice was that she always sounded young. Well into her 60s she sounded young, fresh, clear. And her perfect pitch and sense of rhythm made her a musician's musician.

I like this thread a lot; great comments. Anita O'Day always sounded (to me) like she was performing a trick. Great pipes, but no "there" there.

I loved Billie Holiday when I was younger... nothing like the pain, womanly wisdom and exhaustion and slow-burning fatalism in her thick and smooth voice. Now I am an old man, I still respect (and love her), but I don't choose to listen to her much - she just sounds so stoned, so tired....

I’m not enchanted by her voice as much as fascinated by the woman and all of her self destruction

[quote]all of her self destruction

Too much fried food??

Too much booze and heroin

She was a bit fat to be a junkie.

ah... you mean Holiday.

I think Ella's biggest vice was fried chicken.

I discovered her Songbooks in high school, and through them found some of the lesser-known songs of Rodgers and Hart, Berlin, etc. Recently played the Gershwin discs and they're as fresh as paint. The albums were revolutionary.

Her voice sounds like an instrument. It's very consistent. There's that richness to it that sounds almost unctuous. She's soothing.

Can Ella shatter glass?

Her scatting records are pretty amazing. She was doing mashups and sampling long before hip hop was even thought of. She sings little bits of 20 different songs, all at top speed, totally in key with a melody she makes up in her head. It's astonishing.

Scat?

Dame Janet Baker, when asked if she could have born with someone else's voice, without hesitating said, "Ella Fitzgerald's of course - and most singers would agree". As someone else said, inerrant pitch, even volume throughout her range, bell-like, seemingly effortless vocal production. I also agree with the poster who said that she sounded girl-like her entire performing life. She didn't get that old-age hootiness that lots of singers start to get in their 50s.

Scat! scat!

As others have remarked, the songbooks were my introduction to Ms. Fitzgerald. I love how she's playful, in somany tunes.

A lesser songbook in the Jerome Kern and the first 7 tracks are wonderful. I love her "I'll be Hard to Handle". Lyrically it's a delight.

American bel canto.

R39, thanks as I have never heard that song before. Those are pretty tricky lyrics but Ella glides through.

R41, I recommend the Kern songbook and there are a number of other lyrically tricky song, which was a good description of Hard to Handle.

While Garland is often (and correctly) considered the greatest female performer of the 20th century it is easy to agree that Fitzgerald is the smoothest and loveliest of song stylists. Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan deserve equal praise but Ella is sublime with pristine tone.

It's hard to imagine someone born lower down on the ladder in American society. Ugly, poor, homeless, orphaned, black female. And yet she achieved blazing success on the strength of sheer talent.

[quote]While Garland is often (and correctly) considered the greatest female performer of the 20th century

mmmm.... considered by whom? DL regulars? Stephen and Richard in the apartment upstairs? I mean she's talented, unique, a true movie star.... but outside the gay environs.... ???

The most astounding detail of her life is that her springboard to success was due to winning the talent night at the Apollo Theatre-- where she originally wanted to perform as a dancer! I believe there was another dancing performance that preceded her, so at the last moment she was persuaded to sing instead. What a fateful decision that turned out to be. The entire trajectory of American popular music would have been thrown off course.

This all bores me. I’m going to the dentist to my cavity filled.

It wasn't just Ella's vocal tone that made her wonderful, it was her intelligent and tasteful musicianship. Most singers nowadays mutilate standards with their improvisations, Ella knew how to highlight the melody while adding her own spin.

Can I cite the sources? Sadly, no, but I think that many critics and peers marveled at Garland's innate talent across all forms of show biz: singer, naturally, but also a dancer of grace and elegance, a comedienne, stage, screen, radio, and tv personality, raconteur (-euse?), powerhouse in dramas when allowed to do so, and an absolute trouper in every sense of the word.

History’s greatest singers divide in two.

Ella Fitzgerald.

Followed by everyone else.

Sinatra and Garland could deliver lyrics better than Ella ever could.

Yes, she was technically brilliant, but she comes across as cold and detached in so much of what she did.

And Ella lacked sex, so prim and proper. Listen to Peggy Lee in comparison.

Peggy Lee ..... wow.

Peggy Lee had a fraction of the vocal ability that Ella had, but watch her delivery, her phrasing. The sly mocking attitude . The sex. It's masterful.

Ella couldn't begin to do something like this.

OF COURSE Peggy could deliver "Fever" - she wrote the fucking song! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it's tailored to her because it is her.

[quote]OF COURSE Peggy could deliver "Fever" - she wrote the fucking song!

The song was NOT written by her.

She did however revise SOME of the lyrics for her version.

[quote]I loved Billie Holiday when I was younger... nothing like the pain, womanly wisdom and exhaustion and slow-burning fatalism in her thick and smooth voice. Now I am an old man, I still respect (and love her), but I don't choose to listen to her much - she just sounds so stoned, so tired....

I do love Billie Holiday, and there is great music from early, middle, and late in her short life, but there's no getting around that she was uneven. It isn't just that her voice became narrower in range and harsher in tone with everything she was putting herself through; she also could be mannered and exaggerated in her lesser work.

As I've grown older, I've appreciated Ella more and more, and now I think she's the greater complete artist of the two. She's a good example of the art that conceals art. She never sounds to be doing all that much with a song (unless she's scatting), but she's presenting the song with purity and directness and first-rate musicianship. And once she got away from the disposable novelty numbers with which she was too often saddled in the '30s and '40s, the quality of her material was very high. I value above all her recordings of the Verve years. Norman Granz worked her to death, having her constantly recording when she wasn't on the road (which was often), but what a legacy there is to enjoy from the '50s and '60s. On the background of how much she was singing in those days, it's remarkable how consistent she is.

Smooth as silk!

Ira Gershwin said to his brother "I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them".

Bing Crosby said: “Man, woman or child, Ella is the greatest of them all."

Peggy Lee. Spare me.

At top of her game no one could touch Ella Fitzgerald.

Leather is tough, but Hannah's heart is tougher.

WOW - I stand corrected... I honestly thought Lee wrote "Fever"... mea culpa.

Peggy Lee is funnier and more sardonic and, in a sense, more modern. But she's just not as pleasurable to listen to.

Ella is indeed pleasurable to listen to. Like Muzak.

She had perfect diction.

No one's forcing you to listen, R63. You can go back to listening to Ed Sheeran

R65 I'll take Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson, Carmen McRae...so many others, long before Ella Fitzgerald.

All I know her music, among others of the traditional pop genre, helped to keep in my sanity during the stupid lockdown.

Many years ago, I saw a documentary about Ella Fitzgerald (I think Tony Bennett narrated it) in which there was something poignant shared. Very late in her life, when she hadn't performed in years, had had medical problems, leg amputations, dementia, she would wake up and insist that she had to go sing; the people were waiting for her. It reminded me of that scene in Driving Miss Daisy in which Jessica Tandy is rushing around frantic because she thinks she's still a teacher.

She didn't have as tragic a life story as some other legendary chanteuses have had, but performing was the source of most of her happiness and satisfaction. She loved singing for people.

I saw her in person in the mid-1980s performing in a wheel-chair in Tallahassee. Electrifying.

Ella's voice is lovely, but so is Anita O'Day.

Garland was a performer. Ella was a singer.

Bel canto.

Love her version of This Time the Dream’s on Me

R66, all great singers who may have individual songs or performances better than Ella but none can touch her breadth and long career.

It's called having a pretty sound. My favorite, Carmen McRae was fantastic, but she didn't have that pretty sound. Nobody did.

For R60 -- the Foghorn Version.

Such a beautiful voice.

I put on headphones and listen to her at work when my co-workers are driving me nuts. Thank you, Ella, for keeping me employed.

[quote] While Garland is often (and correctly) considered the greatest female performer of the 20th century

I never heard critics or music historians rank Garland that way. Maybe eldergays who still cherish their vinyl copies of "Judy at Carnegie Hall."

Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday are often ranked as the greatest singers of the 20th century.

Love her doing Cole Porter, specifically Only You. That song has everything, tied together so neatly by her unobtrusive voice.

ONLY LOVE!

Dinah Washington used to babysit my oldest sister. My sister’s father was one of Dinah’s husbands. (We had different fathers). He was my mother’s first husband and Dinah Washington’s 6th.

^Sorry, 5th husband ^

The extraordinary life of Ella Fitzgerald in 10 pictures:

Here's Ella with Karen Carpenter.

Apparently, Karen was lip synching (? not sure) and Ella was singing live.

My favorite female singer. No one compares to Ella.

The opera singer Cecilia Bartoli also said her favorite singer was Ella Fitzgerald. She was sublime.

In this video she sings 'This Girl's In Love With You' - a voice like honey yet she can belt out the low notes too. Love Ella and Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson and don't forget Mom's Mabley!