Ella Fitzgerald had the purest vocal instrument in jazz history, but the life behind that voice was anything but smooth. She was orphaned as a teenager, spent time in a brutal reformatory, was nearly barred from performing because of her appearance, and faced decades of racial discrimination even as she became the most acclaimed singer in American music.

This episode traces Fitzgerald from her desperate adolescence through her discovery at the Apollo Theater amateur night, the scat singing revolution, the Songbook albums that preserved the Great American canon, and the personal struggles she hid behind her radiant performances.

• Fitzgerald's orphaned adolescence, homelessness, and the reformatory that nearly broke her
• The Apollo Theater amateur night that launched her career and the mentors who shaped it
• The scat s ...