Top 44 Ella Quotes

I have always loved creating and entertaining. It started with music, singing. I grew up in a household filled with music – not pop but old-school stuff, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.

Popular music is one endless love song that, I suspect, the basically solitary Ella Fitzgerald approached much as the basically solitary Marianne Moore approached poetry: reading it with a certain contempt for it, Moore said, you could find a place in it for the genuine.

You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone’s voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.

When I was 12, I didn’t know about Nirvana or Oasis or any of those people. I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Gershwin.

There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she’s merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness – even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it.

My background was always more soulful pop. I was named after Ella Fitzgerald, and when I was a kid, I was listening to Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Joss Stone. For me, it was always about the voice.

I look at the careers of people I’m standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they’ve been holding me up for quite a long time.

My name is Ella; that’s who I am at school, hanging out with friends, while I’m doing homework. But when I’m up on stage, ‘Lorde’ is a character.

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.

I remember Ella Fitzgerald sort of coming into my life like a bolt of lightning – like, what is that? It was one of the purest examples of God in art that I’d ever seen.

I’ve always sung. I was really into musical theater when I was growing up. As a kid, I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, actually, on cassette tapes.

The three great moments of my life had to be the concerts of Ellington in 1938, Dizzy in ’48, and Ella in ’52.

I didn’t really grow up on hip-hop. Ella Fitzgerald and the old school jazz divas are more my comfort zone.

I don’t know how much more what I’ve done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There’ve been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.

When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics – I was literally singing before I was talking.

I loved Judy Garland growing up, and I also loved Ella Fitzgerald.

I go back to, like, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Elvis. I listen to everything.

The window in which it’s acceptable to listen to Ella Fitzgerald’s 1960 record ‘Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas’ is short, so I keep it in heavy rotation throughout the festive season.

Whitney Houston and Ella Fitzgerald are my musical mothers. I learned everything I know about true R&B, pop and jazz singing from these stunning performers and unparalleled musicians.

I actually got thrown into my Bar Mitzvah because my teacher, my Cantor, did not tell me that they would all say ‘amen’ at the end of each, for want of a better word, paragraph. And that threw me completely. I almost went into an Ella Fitzgerald sort of scat.

That’s nice, to be compared to Joanna Lumley. She played my mother once in ‘Ella Enchanted.’ I was one of the ugly sisters, and she was the stepmother, so that was great. I’ll take that comparison, thank you.

I was living in New York. Sometimes, our gang of musicians would go to Louis Armstrong’s home and play records. It was a lesson, like going to school at night. Ella Fitzgerald was an inspiration, too, a unique artist. When you had an opportunity to be with people like them, you cherished it.

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.

Ultimately, I’d say a lot of my vocal influences are jazz-based, people like Ella Fitzgerald, or Fred Astaire.

I just wanted to do a music show, with the whole realm of music from Ella Fitzgerald to rock bands like Cream to Kenny Rogers. We had a lot of country, but we did every kind of music. The Monkees were on, and so was Johnny Cash.

I write in that space between Ella’s childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.

I grew up listening to all kinds of music. When I came up, you would hear people like Marvin Gaye talking about Sarah Vaughan. You would go to a show and see Ella Fitzgerald performing the music of the Beatles.

If my dog Ella, named after the Rihanna song ‘Umbrella’, could be with me at all times, that would make me happy.

Ella can work nightclubs that Duke might not be able to work, because of having the big band. Where they go now is strictly a matter of their own names and talents.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis, and you have Umm Kulthum.

I would say my greatest musical influences have been Ella Fitzgerald and Mary J. Blige.

I always liked Nat King Cole. I always wanted to go my own way, but I always favoured other singers like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald – I loved Ella Fitzgerald. There are so many of them. Nina Simone was one of my favourites – Johnny Mathis.

The album that defined my childhood was probably Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Greatest Hits,’ whereas my half-sister, who didn’t have the same conservative upbringing, was listening to Cash Money and crunk.

I believe that a hundred years from now, when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles, Bird, Clifford Brown, Ella and Dizzy, among elders as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs and Beethovens.

Germany is probably the richest country in Western Europe. Yet they wouldn’t take any television with Duke and Ella, their reaction being that people weren’t interested in it.

The premieres are, kind of exciting, especially to Ella, who loves limousines.

My style of singing has always been referred to ‘soul’ singing when it fact it’s more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I’m closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.

One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.

I look back at Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and especially Betty Carter, whom I admire the most, and I say, OK, they set a standard of excellence. I listen to them not for what they are doing, but to study where they are coming from because, for me, jazz is life experience.

I’ve always been attracted to music, and women like Aretha Franklin, Beyonce, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and Tina Turner showed the path, in a way. They’re all tough women but not afraid to be vulnerable. They made me feel someone like me could do that.

I’m comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.

I’m probably the only one in the world you can name that’s worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I’m the only one.

My favorite singer is Ella Fitzgerald.