"Becoming Ella Fitzgerald" by Judith Tick (2023)

Impeccably researched but ultimately a bit dry, the latest biographer of beloved "Fitz" falls in the same trap as Nadine Cohodas in her biography of Dinah Washington - namely, lacking info about the subject's personal life, the authoress focuses on every single documented concert performance and studio recording. So after a few chapters it starts to get a bit repetitive, because there is simply nothing much to tell about Fitzgerald herself, except yet another concert, another tour, another studio recording. Because Ella was (pardon the pun) elusive, we can admire her, we can love her but we can not pinpoint anything specific about her outside of the concert stage. There might be a possibility that the great lady genuinely had no private life, since she was always working - you never read about Fitzgerald enjoying some relaxed vacation or such, until the very end when Diabetes forced her into a wheelchair and she was simply not physically capable of touring anymore.  

I was initially a bit alarmed already in the foreword, because Judith Tick had a currently fashionable way of expressing herself as being not lucky but "privileged" for having access to archives - you know, the type who is always on some spiritual quest, "learning" and "changing the narrative". Thankfully she did not turned the book into anything but biography of a musician, even though she occasionally tries valiantly to describe her subject as activist, where Fitzgerald was by all accounts everything but. Personally I did not find it boring but I can understand that some readers might find it a bit exhausting.

Curiously, Thick completely ignores what might have been genuinely interesting part of the story - Fitzgerald's teenage years spent in New York's reformatory school with other juvenile delinquents where she was allegedly frequently beaten and punished - Thick just breezes over this and never elaborates how this might have scarred and psychologically  shaped the singer always known for her quiet disposition. (According to the documents, teenage Fitzgerald escaped the institution.)