Chris Vognar at the LA Times:
The title of “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald,” Judith Tick’s incisive, doggedly researched new biography of the 20th century’s preeminent songstress, suggests action and movement. This is no accident. As Tick writes, “across her entire career, the artist was always ‘becoming Ella Fitzgerald.’”
Her reign began as a swing singer with the great bandleader and drummer Chick Webb; took on a bop tenor as she fell under the influence of Dizzy Gillespie; and blossomed into refined pop elegance with her remarkable run of songbook albums produced by Norman Granz. She could irk the jazz purists and confound the supper club set. But for more than 60 years, to paraphrase a male peer who weaves in and out of this narrative, she did it her way. Tick, a professor emerita of music history at Northwestern University, proves an ideal guide to Fitzgerald’s perpetual progress. She translates what she hears with lyrical clarity, describing the “honey-mustard blend” of Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s voices on their classic duets.
more here.