Have I told you how I feel about Ella?
Probably. But.
Ella is the soundtrack of my life. No particular song or songbook, mind you, but just Ella herself.
Smooth. Silvery. Sweet. Smoky. Sad. Sarcastic. And sexy.
Eternally and perfectly and undeniably right.
When she sings, I feel it right here. You can play me your Billie and Sarah and Dinah and Etta, and I’ll admit they can sing, too. Beautifully, even. Soulfully.
But no one gets me like Ella.
I can remember picking her clear, silky tone out of the pantheon of vocalists that my dad played over the years. Something in the air would change, and I’d know.
“Who is that?”
“Ella.”
“Yeah.”
Give me Ella doing Gershwin, or Ella doing the Duke, or even Ella doing Cole. And Ella and Louis? Good Lord.
Whether she is giving it up like a siren or a trumpet or a canary or a summer breeze, I’m lost in every note.
When I’m in love, it’s all “Our Love Is Here To Stay” or “Cheek To Cheek” or “The Nearness Of You”.
When I’m heartbroken, it’s all “I Got It Bad” or “The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea”, or “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” or “Someone To Watch Over Me”.
And when I don’t care? When I am blissfully alone and ridiculously alive? “The Lady Is A Tramp.”
I wish.
I wrote in an English 307 paper during my second year that my goal was to “write like Ella sings.” And my teacher, a jazz devotee of the highest order, simply penciled below my words, “Good luck.”
Ah, yes.
Because could I ever? Will I ever be so smooth? So effortless? And what did the woman herself say about the gift that has stunned me speechless more often than I can express?
“I sing like I feel.”
Indeed. If that’s what she was up to, and that’s my goal — to write like I feel — then I’ve got a hell of a long way to go. I can barely feel how I feel properly half the time.
I remember talking to someone about Ella once late one night, when “Let’s Fall In Love” came on the tinny sound system of the coffee shop where we’d passed hours and hours drinking overstrong java and debating life with shining eyes and hushed voices.
“Oooh, I love Ella!” I looked for affirmation from my companion, who seemed quite obviously less convinced.
“It’s a bit romantic for me.”
“A bit romantic? How do you mean?”
“All that syrupy, sappy, violins-and-brushes music. It’s just not real life.”
Hmmm.
I didn’t push it much further once the song was done, but his words left me thinking. Was my Ella-love yet another indication of my head-in-the-clouds mentality? Was I just being inexorably, drowningly girly, all clasped hands and fluttering lashes? It wasn’t the first time something I loved pointed towards such a modus operandi.
But the thing is?
Romantic was never Ella’s reality.
She was born to parents who separated shortly after her arrival, at which point her mother moved — Ella in tow — to shack up with a lover in Yonkers. At 15, her mother died in a car accident, and Ella was shipped off to an aunt. Then her stepfather died of a heart attack, and her half-sister (six years her junior) came to live in the tiny house as well.
Ella was sent to reform school a year later, after skipping school and messing around and getting in trouble with the police. Then she escaped, ending up homeless, parentless, and penniless.
She performed for the first time in front of an audience after winning a draw to be in an ‘Amateur Night’ at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. She’d planned to dance, actually, but someone else danced, so she sang.
There was nothing special about how she looked, and her dancing likely wouldn’t have won the night. But she could sing like few other people that had ever graced that stage.
Ella, in an interview: “I know I’m no glamour girl, and it’s not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I’ve got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing.”
Understatement of the century.
Even though she was singing words that other people wrote, she would bring them to life in a way that no one else could. You soared with her highs. You scraped along the ground with her lows. And when she let loose? You knew what it meant to take life by the hand and start running.
But her road, even in the midst of acclaim for her vocal skills (thirteen Grammy awards, countless critical accolades, unmatched praise amongst her peers), didn’t get any more smooth once she’d found her ‘calling.’
An annulment from a marriage to a drug addict. A failed second marriage to another legendary musician, Ray Brown. A child adopted to get her half-sister out of a jam. A possible third marriage to a Norwegian con artist. Are you kidding me?
Not to mention the difficulties that came with being a woman in a harsh, harsh industry. A black woman, at that.
So when she laughed through “Mack The Knife” or whispered her way through “Miss Otis Regrets” or belted through “Summertime”, you knew she knew a thing or two about how ridiculous and brutal life could really be.
She died at age 79, blinded by diabetes. She’d lost her legs three years before her passing, too, due to complications from her illness.
So it never did get easy.
The only easy thing in her life was her voice. It was her way of speaking, of living, of reaching, of being free.
“Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.”
I do.
And I’m still trying to write like Ella sings.
To bring life to a jumble of words. To find my angle on the story. To find my pitch when notes go sour. To wrestle with the melody until I realize it’s the beat I was missing, anyhow.
I’m going to make mistakes along the way. It’s going to be flawed. Trying hard is all I can promise to myself or anyone else. Nothing comes so naturally to me.
And that said? I’m not above being lazy, either.
But when I get it right?
When it sounds just so?
Then I will have Miss Ella to thank.
Because she taught me how to swing.
