BEC中级阅读：America’s First Lady of Song _ 商务英语考试 _

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2010:07:26 00:21:32
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网

　　SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The year was nineteen thirty-three. The place was New York City. Ella Fitzgerald was sixteen years old. She had entered a competition at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She was going to dance. But she had just watched two dancers perform. They were better dancers than she.
　　That competition at the Apollo Theater changed Ella Fitzgeralds life forever. Band leader Chick Webb was watching the competition. He hired Ella to sing with his band. He taught her about singing in public. He even showed her what kind of clothes to wear. In three years, she had her first hit record, "A-Tisket-a-Tasket":
　　STEVE EMBER: Ella Fitzgerald was born in the southern city of Newport News, Virginia in nineteen seventeen. Her father left soon after her birth. Her mother took Ella and moved to New York City. Ellas mother died when Ella was fifteen years old.
　　The next year, Ella started singing with Chick Webbs band. She stayed with Chick Webb until he died in nineteen thirty-nine. Ella kept his band together after he died until World War Two started. Then most of the band members joined the armed forces. While she was with the band, Ella recorded almost one hundred fifty songs.
　　Ella Fitzgerald performed in concerts around the world and became popular internationally.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Ella Fitzgerald was greatly influenced by the experimental music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. It was called be-bop. She used be-bop rhythms in her singing. In nineteen forty-five, she recorded the song "Flying Home," using the be-bop method known as "scat". In scat, the singers voice sounds like another instrument in the orchestra.