L. A. Honors the First Lady of Song : Ella Fitzgerald Day will pay tribute to her incomparable successes over five decades

She has been more famous, over a longer time span, than any other female singer. She sits in the living room of her bright, airy Beverly Hills home, dressed in a simple white outfit, slimmer than she has been since her teens. Suspended from her necklace is a jeweled golden ball, a gift from Jacqueline Picasso.

She is surrounded by countless artifacts attesting to her successes: Grammy awards, NAACP Image Awards, Down Beat trophies (she won her first in 1937). Yet Ella Fitzgerald, who will turn 71 Tuesday, remains amazingly unable to acknowledge the full measure of her fame.

The Chick Webb band singer of the 1930s, the pioneer vocal bebopper of the ‘40s, the Songbook Queen of the ‘50s and ‘60s (she won the first two of her 12 Grammys the year they were inaugurated, 1958, for her Berlin and Ellington albums), the world traveler of the ‘70s, the Memorex and American Express symbol of the ‘80s, is back on track after three years largely sidelined by a series of illnesses.

“I’m sure looking forward to Friday,” she says. That is the day when, during a belated birthday tribute at the Beverly Hilton, she will be saluted by Mel Torme, Joe Williams, George Shearing and dozens of other admirers. She will be the first recipient of the Ella, a lifetime achievement award being instituted by the Society of Singers. Mayor Tom Bradley will be on hand to assure her that it will indeed, officially, be Ella Fitzgerald Day in Los Angeles.

Felled by a heart condition in August, 1986, Fitzgerald underwent quintuple bypass surgery and was off for nine months, then resumed work on an occasional basis, but other physical problems led to another long stretch of semi-inactivity.

“I’ve had some wonderful doctors,” she says. “I go for therapy twice a week. Now they’re letting me do more than one concert--last month I played three nights in Palm Springs, so it looks like I’ll be working more regularly.”

So how has she spent these long periods of convalescence?

“Staying home and being bored. I miss the road. I miss going overseas. Certain cities are almost like home, because I’ve made so many friends there.”

The Ella Fitzgerald story clearly would never make a motion picture; she has had no troubles with booze or drugs, is friendly with her ex-husband, Ray Brown, and virtually defies any scavenging reporter to find a negative comment or even the whisper of a scandal. Who wants to see a movie about that kind of stuff?

She has few regrets and a few ambitions. “I love music so much, but I never really had any schooling. I can read music, but not fast. One time Chick Webb was going to have a lady help me to study voice, but she said I already had a style, so she didn’t want to teach me because it might ruin what I had.”

Ambitions? “Maybe it sounds silly, but I’d like to do a video with some children--one in which I would sing and dance, to show how I started in the business. I’d show the kids doing their dance, then I would do a dance from my era.

“I’ve never been to Russia, and I would like to go. A conductor from Russia caught a show of mine at Carnegie Hall and brought me an album with my name on it in Russian. I’d love to go because I understand they love me there, and music is one of the two things that brings people close together: music and sports.”

This recent series of layoffs has been by far the longest in a career that began 54 years ago. Benny Carter, the saxophonist and composer, recalls a very early encounter: “I heard Ella in an amateur night at the Apollo in 1935 and knew immediately that a star was being born. I called (talent scout) John Hammond, who was sponsoring the reorganization of the Fletcher Henderson orchestra. John and I took Ella to Fletcher’s house. To my great surprise, Fletcher and his wife and John failed to share my enthusiasm. Ella remembers Fletcher saying ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’ ”

Perhaps the rejection was no surprise to the 17-year-old aspiring singer. “I really always wanted to be a dancer,” she says. “In Yonkers, I was known as one of their great little tap dancers.”

Joe Williams remembers it well, from a somewhat later period: “She originally wanted to be one of the group called Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. I remember sometimes when she came offstage, I’d carry her to the dressing room--she only weighed about 130--and she and I danced together often.”

In a last minute change of heart at one of a series of amateur shows, Fitzgerald decided to sing rather than dance. “I knew three songs; I’d heard Connie Boswell sing them on the radio--’The Object of My Affection,’ ‘Believe It Beloved’ and ‘Judy.’ ”

One night, backstage at the Apollo, she sang for the drummer Chick Webb, who grudgingly agreed to try her out with his orchestra on a gig at Yale.

A young saxophonist, Ernani Bernardi, became one of Fitzgerald’s early fans. The future L.A. councilman, then playing with Tommy Dorsey, recalls that on Sundays, Harlem’s renowned Savoy Ballroom hired white bands to play opposite Webb. “I was sitting on the bandstand alone while the rest of Tommy’s guys were off during Chick’s set. Ella came over between songs, and I remember she asked me whether I thought that one day, she would get to record with an orchestra like Tommy’s. As it turned out, a few months later she did record with a white band--Benny Goodman’s.”

Fitzgerald’s reputation soon outgrew Webb’s band. In 1938 she co-wrote an adaptation of an old nursery song, “A Tisket a Tasket.” The record spurred nation-wide demand for Webb.

“They came to California that summer,” says Tom Bradley, who was not yet a rookie cop. “The record was the hottest thing around. I saw Ella at a small bowling alley at 48th and Central Avenue, the only bowling alley in the city open to blacks.

“She has been a favorite of mine ever since; she can sing anything from ballads to swing to bop with equal ease and authority.”

After Webb’s death in 1939, Fitzgerald fronted the band for three years, during which she had an acting and singing role in “Ride ‘Em Cowboy,” an Abbott and Costello movie, playing the part of (remember, this was Hollywood, 1941) a maid.

The breakup of Webb’s orchestra led to easier and more lucrative jobs in tandem with the Ink Spots, but later and more significantly with the band of Dizzy Gillespie.

By the end of the 1940s Fitzgerald was a world-wide phenomenon, blessed with everything but an ego. “We were in San Francisco,” bass player Ray Brown recalls, “when Bing Crosby had a radio show from there. When Ella was asked to do the show, she was so nervous, she was shaking in her boots. I went to Bing’s dressing room to say hello to him and to Al Jolson, who was also on the show. Jolson was saying to Crosby, ‘What the hell am I going to do with that woman on the show?’ And I found out that they were nervous!”

Other celebrities tell similar stories. “When I finally got to meet her, at a concert she was doing with Oscar Peterson,” says Clint Eastwood, “I was totally in awe of her. But to my amazement, she asked for an autographed picture of me !”

In 1950 Fitzgerald co-headlined with Mel Torme at New York’s prestigious Paramount Theatre and, during that decade, she became a favorite at Birdland, then known as “the Jazz Corner of the World.” By then she had acquired two generations of fans.

“You know how I first got to hear Ella?” says Tony Bennett. “Through my mother. She had a birthday coming up and I asked her what she’d like. She said, ‘I’d like to see Ella Fitzgerald at Birdland; she’s my favorite.’ So we saw Ella there and she complimented me on my record of ‘Blue Velvet,’ which really sent me sky high.”

Decca Records’ idea of popular songs, including such dubious masterworks as “Melinda the Mousie,” “My Wubba Dolly,” “Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney” and “The Bean Bag Song,” left something to be desired.

Nobody was more aware of that than Norman Granz, who from 1950 had been featuring Fitzgerald on his “Jazz at the Philharmonic” concerts and had become her manager. In 1955, he got her out of her Decca contract, and she recorded the “Cole Porter Songbook” for Verve Records. Fitzgerald adds her comment: “Norman thought I could do more different types of songs; and how right he was! I’ll always be grateful for that.”

More than a manager, Granz was a respected civil rights activist who fought for accommodations for Fitzgerald and the other “Jazz at the Phil” artists in hotels that tried to bar them. Once, in a typical racist move, Fitzgerald, Gillespie and Granz were arrested in Houston for allegedly gambling in a dressing room.

“At the police station,” Fitzgerald recalls, “they even had the nerve to ask me for my autograph.”

Granz fought the case and had the arrests expunged from the record.

Through Granz, Fitzgerald became a frequent associate of instrumental jazz giants such as Oscar Peterson and guitarist Joe Pass, whose comments on her musicianship are typical: “In the dressing room, we’ll pick out a set of tunes, but once the two of us are onstage, anything can happen. I may surprise her by changing keys, even two or three times, but she’ll be right on it, never missing.”

The Pass-Fitzgerald symbiosis has produced some of her most durable work in recent years.

By the 1970s Fitzgerald’s physical problems had begun to encroach on her career. There was a cataract removal in 1971, an eye hemorrhage the following year, and for a while, she seemed in danger of losing her eyesight.

In 1972 Granz, who had been out of the record business for a decade, brightened the outlook when he returned with Pablo Records, enabling Fitzgerald to produce countless albums, from Nelson Riddle collaborations to jazz combos to Brazilian settings.

Fifty-four years after she joined Chick Webb, Fitzgerald continues to bring the world closer together. Her contribution was perhaps best evaluated recently by two admirers--one a former and the other a current denizen of show business:

Ronald Reagan: “For more than five decades, Ella has brought great joy and delight to audiences all over the globe. She has been blessed with a talent that has taken her to the pinnacle of success, and has earned her a place in history as one of the most respected and admired singers of all time.”

Frank Sinatra: “I’ve known Ella since she was a teen-ager, when I first saw her performing in Harlem. Even back then, she knocked me out. Her pure, crystal clear voice is music unto itself. Ella was, and still is, one of the sweetest, shyest people in the world. Her talent is unsurpassed and seemingly effortless. Ella is simply musical perfection. I’ll always think of Ella as a young girl, because she’s never lost that wonderful quality. Every time I listen to her, I smile.”