Legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (Queen of Jazz) remains an enduring and powerful inspiration for contemporary artists.
This month the Brisbane Vocal Jazz Festival will celebrate her 100th anniversary. Brisbane Jazz Club plays host to this special evening as part of the festival, organised by local jazz singer, recording artist and vocal teacher, Ingrid James.
As a singer, Ingrid was deeply motivated by Ella’s style and tone. “Ella’s got the most beautiful voice, it’s very pure,” Ingrid says. “Critics have said that there are very few people that could out-swing her, there were very few singers that were more exciting or even inventive as a scat singer.”
"Just about every jazz singer I know worth their weight in salt has been inspired at some point in their life by Ella Fitzgerald.”
It was the friendly nature of her voice and her ability to improvise that made Ella loved by fans, composers and her fellow musicians alike.
“She was a very inventive scat singer and she had a friendly voice, which appealed to everybody so she was loved by not only the audience but she was loved by composers, band leaders and instrumentalists, which is a huge feat in that era because singers didn’t have a great reputation amongst instrumentalists. She certainly broke those boundaries.
“An interesting thing is that apparently Ira Gershwin [a famous, 20th Century American lyricist] once said he didn’t realise how good his own compositions were until he heard Ella sing them. So she was certainly loved for the 60 years that she performed in her life and she was loved by everyone.”
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Beyond mere admiration for her work and career, the extensive reach of Ella Fitzgerald’s influence is ubiquitous among aspiring and professional singers to this day; there would be few vocalists who don’t cite Ella Fitzgerald as an inspiration. “We know there is a thing called the ‘Ella factor’ amongst singers,” Ingrid says.
“You often ask singers who they are inspired by or who they listen to and Ella is always in that list. Even though they may have gone on to do contemporary singing or gone on to write original material, just about every jazz singer I know worth their weight in salt has been inspired at some point in their life by Ella.”
For the Ella Fitzgerald 100th anniversary celebration at the Brisbane Jazz Club, Ingrid leads The Steve Russell Trio and a stable of local singers in a tribute that is part music and part talk show. “Essentially The Steve Russell Trio is accompanying the singers and we’re featuring Leigh Carriage, Denise Harris, Toni Allayialis-Hep, Di Clark, Maggie Britton and Jessica Spina; I’ll probably sing one song,” Ingrid says.
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“It’s a slightly different format in that I’ll be hosting it and it will be like a Parkinson-style evening where we’re all on stage for the whole event and everyone will have a microphone.
“There will be a lot of spontaneity, each person will sing and we’ll throw the mic around and have a very nice, natural conversation about how Ella’s influenced each singer. We’ll intersperse it with songs from those singers and we’ll end up all singing together at the end of the night.”
