#Tong hop beat gui tar series

#Tong hop beat gui tar series

But her talent continued blossoming in the 1940s with a series of innovative recordings for Decca Records. Their marriage was annulled, and the young singer was devastated. Without his guidance, she was seduced by Benny Kornegay, a seedy New York City street character much older than Fitzgerald. The man had been something of a father figure. When Webb died in 1939, it was yet another personal blow for Fitzgerald. And there was that irrepressible buoyancy, a smile-inducing sunniness backed by the hottest swing band around. Her keen sense of rhythm was evident, the pitch and intonation precise and crisp.

At 21, Fitzgerald's style was, for the most part, firmly established. The song sat atop Billboard's pop charts for 10 weeks. In 1938, Fitzgerald scored her first smash, a swing version of the nursery rhyme 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket,' which became her signature. But when she did, she silenced the house as she sang two numbers by the Boswell Sisters, 'Judy' and 'The Object of My Affection.'įitzgerald won first place at the Apollo and soon afterward met bandleader Chick Webb, who saw her as a 'diamond in the rough.' He groomed the gawky street kid to front his orchestra and soon started recording her. Ragged, pigeon-toed and visibly nervous, Fitzgerald was booed before she opened her mouth. Fitzgerald was a fan of Connee Boswell, whose lithe style left a deep impression. She remembered the records her mother used to play, songs by the Boswell Sisters.

She initially wanted to dance but, intimidated by the fancy footwork of the Edwards Sisters, decided to sing instead. Two winters later, while taking in a performance of a dancing duo called the Edwards Sisters at the Apollo Theater, Fitzgerald decided to stick around afterward to compete in the amateur hour. The 15-year-old Fitzgerald ran away from the reform school and, for a time, was homeless on the streets of New York City during the Great Depression. Fitzgerald and the others were routinely beaten by a male staff. She was sent 'up the river,' so to speak, to a reform school for girls in Hudson, N.Y., where conditions were harsh and punitive, to say the least. She ran numbers for gangsters and served as a lookout for a bordello until the police caught up with her. In adolescence, Fitzgerald was restless and often truant from school. Fitzgerald never specified what kind of abuse she endured, but it was so bad that she ran away to live with her Aunt Virginia in Harlem. By all accounts, Fitzgerald was a happy child, a tomboy who loved to dance and play stickball in the streets with the boys.īut in 1932, when she was 15, the outgoing girl drew into herself after her mother died, leaving her behind with an abusive stepfather. When Fitzgerald was 6, her mother got married, and the family moved to Yonkers, N.Y., where Fitzgerald's half-sister Frances was born.