As a Child Listening to Ella Fitzgerald

Satin and velvet tones
broke
          through the crackle
of a seventy-eight on my parents’ turntable,
crooning and scatting
                    like a flock of birds.
Ella’s voice,
          a warm hug, skipping
the melody or drawing out emotion
                    like the dripping strand from a spoon
of honey.
She bent and spun songs I’d heard
          delivered straight on the radio, dry,
gave them souls and made them fly,
                     makes me cry,
                                 every time we say goodbye.

Kim M. Russell, 29th April 2025

On the penultimate day of NaPoWriMo, the daily resource is the online galleries of the Whitney Museum and the optional prompt is about musicians, the loving beings “behind the words, the rhythm, and at the heart of every song. Just as music and poetry can fascinate in their own right, so do the personalities behind every form of art.”

The example poems are ‘Canary’, in which Rita Dove riffs on Billie Holiday, and how her life has been spun into myth, and ‘Ode for Donny Hathaway’ by Wanda Coleman, in which she muses on another tragic figure, in the form of the eponymous soul singer and keyboardist.

Our challenge is to write poems that take inspiration from the lives of musicians, poets, or other artists. I’ve written about one of the voices I grew up listening to: Ella Fitzgerald.

Here’s a bonus song with some scatting and impersonation.

Also linked to Merril’s musical Poetics prompt at the dVerse Poets Pub on 29th July 2025.

78 thoughts on “As a Child Listening to Ella Fitzgerald”

  2. I loved how you weaved your childhood and the love for Ella Fitzgerald together and ended it perfectly with her song, ‘It’s hard to say Goodbye’. It was clever and beautiful, Kim. Thank you for adding the video.

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  11. Beautiful, Kim! I remember this prompt, and I think this was one of the songs I thought of using, too.

    I love this:

    “gave them souls and made them fly,
                         makes me cry,
                                     every time we say goodbye.”

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  13. I ADORE Ella Fitzgerald! You’re right, her voice is like a warm hug, no matter how sad the song she’s singing. I daresay you couldn’t get away with songs like Mack the Knife anymore!

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  14. I haven’t listened to Ella in a long time. I remember our neighbours, about 30 years ago, being very surprised at us young punks listening to Ella in the garden on a sunny English Sunday afternoon. Still brings back good memories.

    You’ve triggered something here.

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  17. With a voice which could jazz the hottest and coolest combos, Ella enervated every song with a joyous personality, “a warm hug, skipping / the melody or drawing out emotion / like the dripping strand from a spoon /of honey.” Pure fun and art a child could skip along to. Well done.

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  18. Kim! You had me at Ella! My first love affair with such a singer was Billie Holiday but as time goes by, Ella takes more of my listening time, and Nina Simone, and…

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  21. Ah yes ~ how wondrously you describe her! Ballads, Jazz, Be-Bop .. the scatting .. she could do ANYTHING. I melted every time I heard her voice growing up, and still do! My all time favorite ‘Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered.’

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  22. “a warm hug, skipping
    the melody or drawing out emotion
    like the dripping strand from a spoon
    of honey.”

    Great image, Kim! And that crackle from the seventy eight brings back memories…JIM

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  26. This is gorgeously rendered, Kim! 😍I especially admire this part;

    “She bent and spun songs I’d heard
    delivered straight on the radio, dry,
    gave them souls and made them fly”

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  31. Kim, I like the way you describe her voice and how it affected/affects you. Haven’t heard a lot of her music, but she has a strong voice and knows how to use it. Not sure if you had this commercial over the ocean but I thought it was so good:

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