Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things

I'm going out

I'm gonna rave and shout

I wanna go out, I wanna go out

We're gonna go way out

Way out with the boys

From Ipanema

Fly me to the moon

And let me see What's way up there

Take me to the moon

I wanna go Way, way up there

I wanna see What's up there

Way, way, way, way, way Way up in the moon, yeah

We're gonna do the moonwalk

Got to do the moonwalk

Got to do the moonwalk

Got to do the moonwalk

All the greats came here, everyone.

And we went through these doors,

and you were aware you were in Harlem!

Harlem.

It was November of 1934

when Norma Miller, who is 100 years old now,

first heard a skinny teenage girl sing.

A shabby street kid entered 'Amateur Night' at the Apollo.

The girl has never sung in public.

She's shaking.

Her dress is dirty.

The audience laughed at her.

They introduced this new girl

called Ella Fitzgerald.

We booed her!

'Cause they were introducing somebody we didn't know.

We were all kids, a bunch of rowdy teenagers in the balcony.

Oh, we were mad anyway. "Boo"!

Say, can you imagine, we booed Ella Fitzgerald?

We went to the Apollo and I was the one that was chosen.

My legs were so skinny, I used to wear boots

so nobody could see the bottom of my legs.

She's just 16.

Ella has survived the death of her beloved mother,

a brutal reform school,

and a homeless life in the Harlem streets.

But she's tough. She likes a dare.

And she wants to dance.

At the Apollo, she takes her chances.

I was what they called

you know, the greatest little dancer in Yonkers.

And there were two sisters

who were the dancing-est sisters in the world,

called The Edwards Sisters.

And they were starring at the Apollo.

And when I saw those ladies dance,

I said, "No way I'm going out there and try to dance,

'cause they'd stop the show".

The man said, "You're out here", he says, "Well, do something".

And I sang,

If her voice can bring

Every hope of the spring

That's Judy

And everybody says, "Oh, that girl can sing".

Oh, that's funny.

It was like one of those defining moments

where, "I'm here, I have to do something",

something has to be accomplished.

And to be able to pull out of you, out of yourself,

something that's magical,

you know, that's pretty amazing.

And we heard a sound,

I'm telling you, it was so perfect.

I said, "She shut us up so quick,

you can hear a rat piss on cotton".

That was the story of Ella Fitzgerald.

It was just

One of those things

Just one of those Crazy flings

I was always looking for heroes.

Bells that now and then ring

Icons that looked like me.

Just one of those things

A black woman that was really black.

It was great fun But it was...

She made it seem like anything is possible.

...those things

There's no other Ella, sorry.

One of those

Things

Ella Fitzgerald's life was always about moving on.

In 1919, when Ella was two,

the family left Virginia for New York.

They joined the Great Migration,

tens of millions of African Americans who fled the racism

and the poverty of the South.

The Great Migration was bringing

so many people, like Ella's mother,

all with economic dreams,

cultural dreams, social dreams.

The world would have been opening up.

Ella's mother, 'Tempie',

settled the family in Yonkers,

a few miles north of Harlem.

Heart of Harlem,

the largest coloured city in the world,

with a population of 220,000.

The action for black teenagers is in Harlem.

From Yonkers, it's only a tram

and a five-cent subway train to get there.

Hurry, hurry, hurry

Get, get, get, get Get, get, get, get

Come on

You must take the 'A' train

If you really want to go To Harlem

Come on and take

Take the 'A' train Thank you.

Find the quickest way To get to Harlem

Hurry, hurry, boy It's comin'

Can't you hear those engines strumming?

All aboard Get on the 'A' train

You'll find the quickest way To get to Harlem

The earliest story I have,

from her lips to my ears,

she said she used to dance

on the street corners in Harlem for nickels,

she and her friend Charles.

I wanted to be a dancer, and I ran away from home.

But I got out there and I got hungry

and I was glad to get back home,

and I was glad when my mother whipped me.

I was just so glad to know that I had a home to come to,

a warm bed and, brother, that was it.

when it was the high point

of what we now call the Black Renaissance,

the Harlem Renaissance.

There were all these theatres

and there were fully staged revues.

It was this very unique occurrence

that never really happened anywhere else,

or in any other time.

It was just this incredible flowering

of African-American musical talent that was concentrated

in this very small specific area of just a few blocks.

One of the lovely things about the Renaissance

is this mixture of music.

Okay, so of course you're hearing blues,

of course you're hearing original jazz compositions.

You're also hearing musical theatre,

songs of the day, and those are all in the mix.

So Ella is taking it in and getting ready to join the swing age.

All the bands were on the radio.

Duke Ellington made a point to be on the radio,

and Louis Armstrong was all over the airwaves.

Dinah With her Dixie eyes blazin'

Love to sit and gaze in

To the eyes of Dinah Lee

Yet, every night

My, how I shake with fright Oh

'Cause my Dinah might

Change her mind

Louis Armstrong is the only major scat singer

before Ella Fitzgerald.

He definitely was a big influence on Ella.

The Broadway theatres are lit up with new musicals.

Everyone listens to the songs on the radio,

including a teenage Ella.

Everybody calls it to this day the Great American Songbook,

That's Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter,

and all the great ones.

They're writing songs of love

But not for me

All the greatest songs that everybody loves

to this day.

A lucky star's above

Ella is hearing the young composers

whose music she'll be doing in song books years later.

With love to lead the way

She's hearing Irving Berlin songs,

she's hearing Rodgers and Hart,

she's hearing the wonderful Harold Arlen.

She's hearing all of that

being sung by black singers as well as white.

Than any Russian play

Could guarantee

And people would think, "Oh, those little

dumb little 'Tin Pan Alley',

'Moon June Spoon' songs,

but this became not only the soundtrack of the 20th Century,

but helped to define it in a sense

that it became the American equivalent of classical music.

You know, where the Europeans have Bach and Beethoven,

we have Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and Duke Ellington.

I guess he's not

For

Me

I was raised with the jazz age,

so all I ever heard was jazz.

So, it was natural for me.

Me and jazz came up together.

For kids like Ella and Norma,

the jazz music and the dancing

are an escape from lives shaped by poverty and racism.

Now my mother got two babies,