Ella Fitzgerald (April 25, 1918 – June 15, 1996) from Newport News, Virginia, was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.
Her three octave vocal range was widely celebrated, and is well known for developing a “scat” style of singing. She was also known as the “First Lady of Song” and is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th Century.
Sources:
The Library of Congress - Today in History
memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
