Here's the first Grammy Award Ella Fitzgerald won. I was in the D.C. museum staring at it for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

I remember the first time ever I heard her singing, on a compilation CD in my friend's cheap stereo when I was in secondary school back in the eighties. Her voice just blew me away, I was thinking to myself: how's that possible? How can a vocal make you stop everything you're doing at the moment and make you listen hard, just like Ella's? Then I went crazy finding every recording she had ever done.

My calling is still song writing, but Ella Fitzgerald is the singer/song interpreter I want to be, and I am still working on it... Salute to one of the best singers, if not the best, ever.

ellafitzgerald #washingtondc #singer National Museum of American History