Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)
Filed under the name Ella · April 17, 2026
I grew up on classic rock and Sinatra myself, not really a jazz guy, but even I know you don't get called the 'First Lady of Song' without being about as good as it gets. Ella Fitzgerald had an extraordinary range and that scat singing nobody's really matched since, and I've come to appreciate, the older I get, that real musicianship doesn't need to be my personal taste for me to recognize it's the real deal. There's a lot of overlap, honestly, between what I respect about a jazz legend and what I respect about the guys I worked alongside for thirty-four years at the plant — technical mastery that took years to build, that looks effortless to an outsider but absolutely wasn't. Nobody scats like that by accident on a Tuesday. That takes the same kind of relentless repetition and discipline it takes to run a good line at the mill, just in a completely different direction. I'll never trade Sinatra for Fitzgerald on my own record player, but I know greatness in a craft when I hear it described, even outside my own lane.