Born in Newport News, Virginia, and raised in Yonkers, New York, Ella Jane Fitzgerald (1917–1996), “The First Lady of Song,” got her start at an amateur show at Harlem’s Apollo Theater and defined scat singing for a generation of jazz singers. She recorded more than 200 albums, won thirteen GRAMMY Awards, and, in 1967, received the GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award. She also was honored with many other major awards, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She performed her twenty-sixth and final concert at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1991.
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