#ella100

The “First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald, was born 100 years ago today.

We’re celebrating the centennial of her birth and the legendary career that followed with this portrait on view at our National Portrait Gallery. Dizzy Gillespie, on the right, is all of us as he gazes at Lady Ella in song.

The photographer, William P. Gottlieb, learned to use a camera so that he could include images in his weekly music column for TheWashington Post. Today, his photos of jazz musicians from the 1930s and ’40s are regarded as invaluable visual records of jazz’s Golden Age. 

Read more about Fitzgerald’s rise to fame and this portrait, a recent museum acquisition which has never been shown before.

More pieces from her life in our collection in our Twitter Moment.