THE VOICE OF AMERICA: ELLA FITZGERALD (1918-1996)

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She married and divorced twice. Her first husband was Benny Kornegay, a shipyard worker; her second, the jazz bassist Ray Brown. In the past decade, her many illnesses seemed incompatible with the bell-like clarity of her voice, one recognized by octogenarians and Generation Xers alike. She was performing as late as 1992, but the physical debilitation was crushing, aggravated mostly by diabetes that eventually led to the amputation of her legs below the knees in 1993. But Fitzgerald made no mythology of her personal life. Shy onstage, ill at ease in interviews, she let her songs do all the talking. She gave them a life of their own that superseded hers.

Still, Fitzgerald had a lurking melancholy in her best ballad performances that pushed past the pristine technical perfection of her pitch and phrasing into the night country. As a personality, she was remote, needing music to give her substance. As a performer, even to someone hearing her for the first time, she was an old friend. Talk about Ella or Billie, and no further I.D. is required. "It used to bother me when people I didn't know came up and called me Ella," she admitted once. "It seemed to me they should say Miss Fitzgerald, but somehow they never do."

She had, simply, become a part of the life of everyone who listens to music, a part that runs from a musical past into a shared tradition, and will not ever pass.