Ella goes to my head

When I was in high school, Jewel was asking "Who will save your soul" and Tracy Chapman was looking for you to "Give me one reason" so she could turn right back around. At the time, I didn't know that. Just like I didn't know Toni Braxton needed you to "Un-break my heart" or that Atlantis was out there being "Ironic". Why wasn't I aware of any of this?

Truth be told it was most likely because I was tragically both socially and musically inept. An introvert that didn't seek out or trust anything new. That was before I was introduced to Ella.

Before Ella, I any value I assigned to music was based solely on a personal emotional radius. I liked the Beach Boys and the Drifters because my reserved father would unexpectedly surprise us with delightful fits of joy when their songs came on the radio. Singing along and slapping the steering wheel with his hand. Those happy moments with my dad permanently imprinting themselves into the music. I also loved songs from musicals because I adored the theater and had decided to become famous one day. I felt singing on stage as part of telling a story was so intense, that it was like acting on crack. So I would lip sync the words to "Hello Dolly" imagining myself onstage. Forever linking the potency of those childish aspirations up with songs like: "It only takes a moment."

I am forever grateful to the student teacher that took over our music class for a semester my junior year. I couldn't tell you her name or what she looked like. Like so much of high school those things have faded from my memory. What I do recall is she made it her mission to expose us to different types of music in class. That and the day she played "It's a Blue World" and I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing for the first time. I remember thinking that I had never heard anything so beautiful. It was as if someone had taken a woman's voice and wrapped in silk. When she sang she danced effortlessly over the melody.

This might sound a bit melodramatic to anyone who hasn't experienced it for themselves, but it was as if Ella sparked something inside my soul. I was immediately and completely in love with her voice. And I couldn't say why. There was no outside emotional connection, no broken heart over some unattainable teenage boy, no experience of my own that could directly link itself to Ella or the song.

And yet she moved me in a way that felt so personal. I needed to hear more and soon I had collected her CDs and records. Listening to her sing songs like "Lover Come Back To Me" , "Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered", and "You Go To My Head" . Marveling at her skill and the way her voice could transform the way I heard the song.

Ella led me to Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Diana Krall, and so many others. She was the seed that much of my musical taste has grown out of. Now when I play her records and dance with my baby girl in my arms to songs like "Stairway to the Stars" I know that those moments are getting all tangled up with her music. Engraving themselves into her songs. Only this special feeling I get when I hear Ella sing began with the music not memory.

I imagine my kids will find their own music one day. That at some point they will find a unique intimate connection of their own to an artist or song. And that in the meantime whenever they hear Ella sing, it will bring back memories of their childhood and me. Maybe it will influence their taste in music maybe not. Either way I will continue to delight in sharing my love of Ella Fitzgerald with them. As I am grateful to have had the opportunity to share it with you.