Celebrate: Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald (with Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, and Milt Jackson) by William Paul Gottlieb, gelatin silver print, c. 1947 (printed later). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Lisa Ruthel and Anup Mahurkar
Washington, DC
April 25 marks the 100th birthday of American jazz and popular song vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. The museum is recognizing the anniversary by displaying her photograph by William Gottlieb for the first time in the museum.
The photograph pictures Fitzgerald in performance, flanked by Ray Brown (left), Dizzy Gillespie (right) and Milt Jackson (far right). It was taken around 1947 by William P. Gottlieb (1917–2006), who learned to use a camera so that he could produce images to accompany his weekly music column for The Washington Post. Today, Gottlieb’s photographs of jazz musicians from 1930s and ’40s are regarded as invaluable visual records of jazz’s Golden Age.