Guest Blog: Soft Power, Ella Fitzgerald, and Women’s History Month

By Elizabeth Bougerol

“My dad can’t find out I’m lending this to you.”

My friend slips a record out of her father’s cabinet and hands it to me, cradling it in both hands like a velvet pillow upon which some priceless jewel might sit. I figure I should respond in kind and take it in both hands, so I do. It’s heavier than any record I’ve held before — a double LP with a thick booklet. On the cover, a gorgeous woman in a black turtleneck is holding sheet music, mid-note, giving side-eye to someone not pictured.

I take it home, set the first record onto my parents’ player, and drop the needle. Within thirty seconds, that voice is toying with an assemblage of horns, and I’m on the first of a thousand plays of “Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, Volumes 1 & 2.”

I am twelve years old.

This isn’t my introduction to jazz. My mum has been playing it for me forever. It probably isn’t even the first time I’ve heard Ella Fitzgerald because my jazz-musician granddad mailed us mixtapes that I wore out.