The Sunday Poem: “Ella Under the Stars” by Mari Fitz-Wynn
When Ella sang under the stars,
her voice filled the atmosphere
as she transposed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Her range— incredible.
February 21st, 2026
ella fitzgerald
The Sunday Poem: “Hours of Jazz” by David Dephy
“She is a constellation,” I thought
listening to Ella Fitzgerald.
The magic spell has been cast,
and time has been stopped. OK,
June 26th, 2025
A Black History Month Profile: An Interview with Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, talks about the singer who “changed the trajectory of American vocal jazz in this century.” Ms. Tick. who is professor emerita of music history at Northeastern University, discusses Ella – and her book – in this wide-ranging October 23, 2023 interview.
...February 19th, 2025
What we discover about Kamala Harris from an armful of record albums
Like her or not, readers of this site will enjoy learning that Vice President Kamala Harris is a fan of jazz music. Witness this recent clip (via Youtube) of her emerging from a record shop…
...July 26th, 2024
The Sunday Poem: “Mother’s Day Brunch” by Russell duPont
We’ll have a little brunch for you —
pecan-crusted French toast,
oysters, smoked salmon,
a charcuterie board.
May 11th, 2024
Interview with Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
In Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, the book’s author Judith Tick writes that Ella “fearlessly explored many different styles of American song through the lens of African American jazz, [and] treated jazz as a process, not confined to this idiom or that genre,” and who “changed the trajectory of American vocal jazz in this century.” Ms. Tick. who is professor emerita of music history at Northeastern University, talks with about Ella – and her book – in this wide-ranging October 23, 2023 interview.
...December 6th, 2023
Book Excerpt from Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, by Judith Tick
In this excerpt from the Introduction to her book Becoming Ella: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, Judith Tick writes about highlights of Ella’s career, and how the significance of her Song Book recordings is an example of her “becoming” Ella.
...December 5th, 2023
“A Baker’s Dozen Playlist of Ella Fitzgerald Specialties from Five Decades,” as selected by Ella biographer Judith Tick
Chosen from Ella’s entire repertoire, Ms. Tick’s playlist (with brief commentary) is a mix of studio recordings, live dates, and video, all available for listening here.
...October 16th, 2023
Ella Fitzgerald, in poems by Claire Andreani and Michael L. Newell
Ella Fitzgerald is whispering
to me: “sit here and enjoy your dinner with my
sweet honey voice,” eternal bloom of time,
filling the corner of the street where I eat
with a Golden Age long gone but that remains
like an idea, lingering, like the steam of a
hot bath leaving
traces of fingers on the mirror
September 13th, 2023
Ella Fitzgerald…on being loved
“I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is…”
...August 12th, 2023
Interview with Stephanie Stein Crease, author of Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America
The author talks about her book and Chick Webb, once at the center of America’s popular music, and among the most influential musicians in jazz history.
...July 3rd, 2023
“I Have Almost Everything” – a poem by Connie Johnson
The poet writes of how the desire for love can be distilled into one golden wail of a Billy Strayhorn declaration.
...January 20th, 2023
“With Ella & Louis in the Living Room” – a poem by Terrance Underwood
The poet writes about the 1956 collaboration of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
...June 17th, 2022
“October 12, 2006” — a poem by Erren Kelly
if i could
i’d ride the trains
again
just to make it all go
away
like that phone call i
got that evening
from sis
or that last conversation
we had
October 15th, 2021
“Pentatonic Fusion” — a poem by Marianne Peel
Are you singing on balconies these days?
Do you still sing only in your car, radio tuned
to hot, blistering jazz?
March 15th, 2021
Two poems for Ella Fitzgerald
even in winter, she is a fire blazing, her eyes are
like the the clearest lake or the best dream or
like an opal, where night finds its song
January 29th, 2020
“It’s Too Darn Hot”
In June of 2017, the American president chose to leave the Paris climate agreement because, he said at the time, it is an agreement that “disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” It seems that climate change knows no borders, and nobody benefits from our dear leader’s willful ignorance — witness the record heat and fires across the U.S., and indeed now all over the globe.
Oh well, we too can willfully ignore climate change today by finding a cool corner of our world and cranking up Cole Porter’s “It’s Too Darn Hot,” a song written for the Broadway musical “Kiss Me Kate” in 1948, and made famous by
...August 9th, 2018
Two poems by Robert Nisbet
From red kite country, driving South,
Dai Grandpa, fresh from yesterday,
such yesterday. Only when the
June sun sank, had Dai – dudein’
up my shirt front, puttin’ on
the shirt studs – reached evening’s land
– and such a yester-e’en. (Dai caught
the breeze, his ship came home.)
He breakfasts now in wild kite
November 13th, 2017
Ella is 100
2017 is the 100th birthday year of several jazz immortals – among them Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich, and, today, Ella Fitzgerald.
As a young and naïve jazz fan in the 1960’s, like Louis Armstrong, Ella seemed “square” to me – her voice too sweet and happy for my ears, especially when compared to the singer who most moved my soul to discover more of the music, Billie Holiday. Plus, the Songbook series she became internationally famous for seemed too smartly packaged, slick in a Madison-Avenue-way that tore me away from the bins that stocked her record albums.
Over the years, however, I eventually came to appreciate and cherish her, especially as I learned the courageous and inspirational nature of her biography, and played her recordings with Chick Webb, and dug the collaborations with the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and eventually, of course,
...April 25th, 2017
A Moment in Time — Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, 1947
In November, 1946, at the height of his popularity, Dizzy Gillespie took his big band out on the road, and in 1947 hired Ella Fitzgerald to tour the South. According to Ella’s biographer Stuart Nicholson, she had been added to this tour in response to Gillespie’s Hepsations tour in 1945, whose groundbreaking sound “had confused and confounded the southerners,” and because Ella could “create balance after the unrelieved diet of bop…The Gillespie band saw Ella as a former swing era star, light-years removed from what they were doing, a palliative to help their music go down with the public.”
Even with Ella, however, things could be challenging. The audience would “listen, stand around and applaud,” band member Howard Johnson said,” and try and pretend they dug it. I think they appreciated the artistry of Dizzy because
...August 17th, 2015
“Cry Me a River” — Joe Cocker’s remake of a 1950’s torch song
Joe Cocker, the flamboyant British rocker who died yesterday at the age of 70, was best known for his gravelly voice and charismatic onstage personality, but his career was especially noteworthy due to his successful model of interpreting popular songs of the day. The most obvious example -– the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” performed before hundreds of thousands at Woodstock in 1969 -– was his signature career achievement, a performance Paul McCartney yesterday called “mind-blowing,” one that he was “forever grateful for him for having done that.” One could make the case that Cocker’s appearance at Woodstock and his filmed performance of that tune was indeed a defining moment of the rock era.
Cocker also successfully remade Arthur Hamilton’s “Cry Me a River,” a 1953 torch song originally composed for Ella Fitzgerald to sing in Pete Kelly’s Blues, the Jack Webb film in which Peggy Lee portrayed an
...December 23rd, 2014
“Hearts For Ella”
Toward the end of her life, Ella Fitzgerald, “The First Lady of Song,” faced several health challenges, most stemming from her battle with diabetes. The effects of the disease resulted in the amputation of her legs, and famously contributed to the debilitation of her eyesight. (Who can forget her frequent television appearances, when each successive performance seemed to bring new eye wear fashion and a more powerful eyeglass prescription). But it was her respiratory ailments and congestive heart failure that brought some of the biggest names in jazz together for a fund raiser sponsored by the American Heart Association Avery Fisher Hall in February of 1990. Hosted by Lena Horne and violinist Itzhak Perlman, “Hearts For Ella” featured a Benny Carter-led band that included
...November 18th, 2014
“Ella Fitzgerald in Her Living Room,” a poem by Jillian Phillips
I find comfort in a downpour.
The sound of intermittent pings
is almost a sonata, lulling me.
If Beethoven played on tin,
it would sound like the rain on my roof
October 1st, 2013
Poetry by Jillian Phillips
Drunk
She was whiskey to him.
Swirling around him.
Curving over his tongue
and into him.
The wicked spiciness burned his throat.
January 15th, 2011
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The Sunday Poem
The Sunday Poem: “Conversations (What Jazz Is),” by David Nemerov
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
David Nemerov reads his poem at its conclusion.
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