Word: ella
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ANYWAYS, th' family consists of Weston (Donal Logue), Wesley (Daniel O'Keefe), mother Ella (Holly Cate) n' daughter Emma (Ellen Bledsoe). Weston is the drunken, violent father whose debts n' poor judgment are th' reason th' family is up shit creek t' begin with. Wesley is an arrogant chip off th' ol' blockhead, another one of those Shepard man-children who wears flannel shirts n' still has strings of model airplanes hangin' from th' ceiling in his room...
...racket of the wheels, he could hear them sniggering at his fantasies of stardom, playing good cop-bad cop with his head. One voice demanded to be told where he found the gumption to strut his meager stuff before the same footlights that had illuminated the talents of Ella Fitzgerald, Gladys Knight and Michael Jackson. A second and more kindly presence kept urging him to wriggle off the hook. The next stop would be his last chance to walk across the platform and jump the first train home. "Save yourself," the voice said, reminding him yet again that the Wednesday...
...Apollo's peculiar magic can be a little hard to fathom. That night's first-place winner -- an honor determined solely by the applause -- would pocket just $200. And, of course, there is that infamous Apollo audience, an orchestra and two balconies bursting with folks who give no quarter. Ella Fitzgerald's hazing is a legend. She managed no more than a few off-key notes before Master of Ceremonies Ralph Cooper came out to save her. Stilling the jeers, he won her a reprieve and she started again. On the second try, she brought down the house...
...Underbook, the author displays commendable candor in disclosing what parts of his story are invented. He notes that a love affair between Senator John Breckinridge of Kentucky and Anna Ella Carroll, a pro-Union pamphleteer, did not really happen. The trouble is, it hardly happens in the narrative either. When Breckinridge and Carroll get together, the passion they expend takes the form of abstract debate: "Two nights before, in her rooms at the Ebbitt House, they had stayed up through the dawn arguing the details of the ( President's war power." So much for titillation...
Following that purist philosophy, he dislikes such popular favorites as Linda Ronstadt (he actually sneers when he mentions her name), Frank Sinatra ("too hip for me") and Ella Fitzgerald. "Unquestionably a beautiful voice," he says of Ella, "but I never got a sense she connected with the lyrics. She never churned my kishkes -- that's Yiddish for intestines." His list of favorites is just as idiosyncratic. It includes Minnelli, of course, but also Rosemary Clooney ("she does everything a singer should do"), Gogi Grant ("she has an emotional intensity and is much underrated") and Martha Raye ("her voice was like...