When a nervous 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald won Amateur Night at the Apollo in 1934, the legendary Harlem theater's talent contest was new, and the orphaned teen hadn't planned to sing.
She was going to dance, as she had been doing on street corners in the neighborhood. But the Edwards Sisters, hoofers par excellence, preceded her in the lineup, and their showstopping act was one that she didn't dare follow.
So she sang. With that spur-of-the-moment decision, the girl who would become one of the all-time greats set her life on its singular trajectory, unleashing a voice of staggering range, power, suppleness and unparalleled improvisatory genius.
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