Ella Fitzgerald wins Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater - November 21st, 1934

On this day in 1934, at 17-years-old, Ella Fitzgerald became the first female performer to win Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that belts out the greatest hits of history
one day at a time. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today

(00:24):
we're celebrating the stage debut of legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald,
a k a. The First Lady of Song. The day
was November one, n four, At seventeen years old, Ella

(00:45):
Fitzgerald became the first female performer to win Amateur Night
at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She had prepared a
dance routine in case she was called on stage to perform. However,
at the last minute, Ella made the fateful decision to
sing a song instead. What happened next earned her the

(01:06):
twenty five dollar prize and placed her firmly on the
path to stardom. Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia,
on April nineteen seventeen. She took an interest in dance
in the third grade and loved showing off her moves
to her friends on the way to school and at lunchtime.

(01:28):
Ella's love of jazz came partly from her mother, who
listened to artists like Louis Armstrong and the Boswell sisters.
As a young girl, Ella tried to emulate the sound
of lead singer Connie Boswell, later saying quote, my mother
brought home one of her records, and I fell in
love with it. I tried so hard to sound just

(01:50):
like her. Ella's life took a tragic turn in nineteen
thirty two when her mother died from injuries sustained in
a car crash. The loss hit Ella hard, and she
sank into depression. She dropped out of high school and
eventually got in trouble with the law. She was sent
to a reform school in Hudson, New York, where she

(02:11):
was frequently beaten by her supposed caretakers. Ella eventually ran
away from the reformatory and survived the next two years
by singing and dancing on the streets of depression era Harlem.
At the time, the neighborhood was bursting with talented black performers,
and the newly opened Apollo Theater was at the center

(02:33):
of the action. After opening in early nineteen thirty four,
the theater quickly made a name for itself as the
place to see top tier talent perform One result of
this glowing reputation was that Apollo audiences expected to see
the best. That meant they were eager to accept and

(02:53):
encourage strong performances. But the flip side was that when
a performance didn't meet that high standard, the crowd was
just as passionate in voicing its displeasure. The rowdy reactions
could be so brutal that the crowd at the Apollo
soon became known as the world's toughest audience. Near the

(03:14):
end of its first year, the Apollo Theater began hosting
a weekly amateur night where aspiring performers could enter their
names in a drawing for the chance to compete on
stage for prize money. But with a crowd like the
one I just described, the stakes were far higher than
just a cash prize. A positive response could make your career,

(03:36):
but a poor one could just as easily break it.
Ella Fitzgerald may not have taken that risk on November
one if not for two of her friends who dared
her to enter the drawing with them. As she later explained, quote,
it was a bet. We just put our names in.
We never thought we'd get the call. But shockingly, Ella

(03:59):
did get the call that night, though the timing couldn't
have been worse. In the off chance that she was
called on stage, Ella had planned to perform a snake
like dance routine popularized by Harlem artist Earl Snake hips Tucker. However,
just before Ella's name was called, a talented local dance

(04:20):
duo called The Edwards Sisters closed out the evening's main show.
Ella was mortified by the idea of following an act
that she once described as quote the dancing at sisters
in the world. The Edwards Sisters had actual costumes, their
routines were flashy and polished, and here was Ella, a disheveled,

(04:43):
houseless teenager, about to perform her street corner routine on
the biggest stage in town in front of a notoriously
demanding audience. Decades later, Ella described the moment she took
the stage, saying, quote, I looked and I saw all
those people, and I said, Oh my gosh, what am

(05:04):
I going to do out here? Everybody started laughing and
said what is she gonna do? That question was on
everyone's mind, and at the last possible moment, Ella changed
the answer. Instead of dancing, she would sing. As amateur
Night mc Ralph Cooper begged the jeering audience to give

(05:26):
the girl a chance. Ella asked the band to play
a Hoagy Carmichael song called Judy Live Putting Live put
in pos There's only one in the Light of the
Sun that's Junior. She was familiar with the tune because
Connie Boswell's cover version had been one of her mother's

(05:48):
favorite songs. Unfortunately, Ella was so nervous that when the
music began, she forgot the words. The crowd started booing her,
so Cooper returned to the stage and asked one last
time for their patients. He said, quote, this young lady's
got a gift she'd like to share with us tonight.

(06:09):
She's just having a little trouble getting it out of
its wrapper. Let's give her a second chance. This time,
the words came easily, and by the end of the
song the crowd was demanding an encore. Ella happily obliged
by singing another hit from the Boswell Sisters, the Object
of My Affections to go through what he wants to

(06:35):
affection and change. Her performance brought down the house and
one or the competition, but more importantly, it helped the shy,
self conscious girl realized that she belonged in the spotlight.

(06:55):
As Ella later said, quote, once up there, I felt
the acceptance and love from my audience, I knew I
wanted to sing before people the rest of my life.
She got started on that dream right away by entering
and winning every talent show in town. A year later,

(07:16):
she began performing with the Chick Web Orchestra, and then
made her first recordings soon after. All told, Ella Fitzgerald
recorded more than two hundred albums and two thousand songs
in her lifetime, selling over forty million albums in the process.
She won thirteen Grammys, the n Double, A CP Image

(07:38):
Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Her fifty plus year career took her to some of
the greatest venues in the world, including twenty six performances
at Carnegie Hall, but the most important show she ever
played may have been that first one at the Apollo
Theater in Harlem. For a young girl with a rocky

(08:00):
past found her place in the world by doing what
she loved. I'm Gabelusier and hopefully you now know a
little more about history today than you did yesterday. You
can learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d I h C Show, and

(08:21):
if you have any comments or suggestions, you can send
them my way at this Day at i heart media
dot com. Thanks as always to Chandler Mays for producing
the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
back here again tomorrow for another Day in History class.

(08:45):
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