Ella Fitzgerald Quotes: Remembering The Queen Of Jazz On Her 101 Birthday

On Wednesday April 25, famous American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald would have turned 101 years old. She was popularly known as the first lady of song, queen of jazz, and Lady Ella.

She was born in 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, to William Fitzgerald and Temperance (Tempie) Fitzgerald.

It was soon after her birth that her parents separated and Fitzgerald along with her mother moved to Yonkers, New York. Her mother died in the year 1932 when Fitzgerald was just 15-years-old.

Fitzgerald spent all of her childhood in aspiring to become a dancer, but, at the age of 17, she debuted at the Apollo Theatre in Manhattan, New York, as a singer and there was no stopping her after that.

Throughout her decade-long career, she worked with all the jazz legends including Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman.

In the year 1958, Fitzgerald also made history by becoming the first African-American woman to win a Grammy Award. The world lost the jazz star in 1996 at the age of 79 in Beverly Hills, California.

On her birthday today, here are 10 beautiful quotes by Fitzgerald.

1. "Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."

2. "Music is the universal language ... it brings people closer together."

3. "Everybody wants to know about my style and how it came about. It's no big secret. It's the way I feel."

4. "I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don't have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you'll understand."

5. "I know I'm no glamour girl, and it's not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I've got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing."

6. "The fabulous places I've been, wonderful things that've happened, great people, I've met ought to make a story."

7. "Coming through the years, and finding that I not only have just the fans of my day but the young ones of today — that's what it means, it means it was worth all of it."

8. "I used to be very self-conscious. I used to wish I was pretty. My cousin Georgia always taught me that if you smile, people will like you. Sometimes people will say something you don't like, and you get angry a bit, but you just smile. You let it go by, even if you really would like to choke 'em. By smiling, I think I've made more friends than if I was the other way."

9. "You take romance — I'll take Jell-O."

10. "When I'm on stage I feel at home. "