Grammy Museum exhibit celebrates Fitzgerald’s 100th
LOS ANGELES — The Grammy Museum is putting rare Ella Fitzgerald memorabilia on display for what would have been the singing legend’s 100th birthday.
The museum’s “Ella at 100: Celebrating the Artistry of Ella Fitzgerald” exhibition includes the first Grammy Award that Fitzgerald won — the first awarded to an African American woman — as well as some of her gowns, sheet music and personal telegrams.
Fitzgerald died in 1996 at 79 from complications with diabetes and left few possessions beyond personal notes, but the exhibit puts a focus on what made Fitzgerald a star: her voice.
Curator Nwaka Onwusa says she wants visitors to be captivated by her singing, so the exhibit includes video and audio of her early performances with jazz greats Count Basie or Duke Ellington.
The exhibit is one of several celebrations of Fitzgerald’s birthday, April 25.
“Ella Fitzgerald’s is probably the single most important voice in American history,” said musician Miles Mosley. “If you’re going to start with any song before 1970, her version is the one you start from.”
Celebration of Fitzgerald’s 100th began March 31, as Dianne Reeves held a Fitzgerald tribute concert at the Library of Congress. A day later, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which has long hosted a Fitzgerald exhibit, opened a new display, “First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald at 100,” kicking off Jazz Appreciation Month.
Onwusa said Fitzgerald’s exhibit was not easy to put together, noting that the relatively new Grammy Museum, which opened in 2008, could not compete with the long-established Smithsonian and Library of Congress, which have long been collecting Fitzgerald memorabilia.
But the Los Angelesbased Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation and Fitzgerald estate came through with enough items to make for an attraction, including gowns Fitzgerald wore in performance, rare photographs, sheet music, newspaper articles, concert programs.
The exhibit runs through Sept. 10.