Recasting Ella: Philanthropist

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Full Moon on Progress Street takes a close look at a key moment and song to reveal the hidden lives and interests of some of the most important Black female artists of the 20th century – Ella Fitzgerald, Big Mama Thornton, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Dr Rommi Smith, life-long jazz and blues listener, considers a key moment in the creative life of each artist, reappraising what we think we know about them from popular culture. Each essay “flips the script”, to show a different hidden story. All these iconic women are broadly misrepresented - history and discrimination airbrushing their interests, politics, sexualities, creative legacy and passions. Essay 1 - Recasting Ella: Philanthropist Ella Fitzgerald was not the racist-caricature “mammy” figure of her popular image. She quietly worked as a political activist and social philanthropist e.g. chairing The Martin Luther King Foundation. In February 1960, Ella “corpsed” on stage, forgetting the words to Mack the Knife (by German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill), live on stage at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin – the venue inaugurated by Hitler and symbolic of the Nazis. Ella used scat to resurrect her performance, producing an iconic soundtrack which earned her two Grammy Awards. This essay considers the power and politics of scat, and Ella’s brilliant use of it, as a defining expression of freedom. Dr Rommi Smith is a writer, performer and academic, whose research centres the performances of historical Black jazz and blues women within the context of civil rights. Rommi’s academic work is published by, amongst others, New York University Press and Routledge. Contributors to her research include: five-time Grammy-winning NEA jazz master, Dianne Reeves and five-time Grammy-winning musician, Dr Esperanza Spalding. A three-time BBC Writer-in-Residence, Rommi is a guest curator of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Poetry Please and a contributor to programmes ranging from Front Row to The Verb, The Essay to Woman’s Hour. The inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence and Poet-in-Residence for Keats House, Hampstead, Rommi was also the Poet-in-Residence for the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. Rommi’s fifth collaboration as librettist with the baritone and composer Roderick Williams responds to the oratory of Dr Martin Luther King. It will be performed by the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral in December 2024. www.rommi-smith.co.uk @rommismith Writer and Presenter, Dr Rommi Smith Producer, Polly Thomas Exec producer, Eloise Whitmore A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3