Ella Fitzgerald nephew: Meet Ray Brown Jr.
Ella Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia.
Her parents were named William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Henry on the 1920 census, both of whom were classified as “mulatto.”
Her parents lived together in the East End of Newport News for at least two and a half years after she was born, even though they were not married. Fitzgerald’s mother moved to Yonkers in Westchester County, New York, at the beginning of the 1920s with her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph da Silva.
Ella Fitzgerald’s nephew: Meet Ray Brown Jr.
American jazz and blues singer Raymond Matthews Brown Jr. was born on August 13, 1949.
He was born to Ella Fitzgerald’s half-sister Frances in New York City as Ray Brown and Ella Fitzgerald’s adoptive kid. He frequently hosted Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and many other artists throughout his early years.
When Ray was ten years old, his family moved to California, where he discovered a love for music and drumming. He participated in community performances and hospitals with the school choirs while a student at Beverly Hills High School.
He was given the opportunity to train with them by jazz percussionists Bill Douglass and Chuck Flores. Despite coming from a jazz background, he admits that playing rock music was a form of defiance for him.
“When I used to do this, my parents used to think I was crazy. I told my father that I had played that song frequently a few years before he died away, merely to see the look on his face “.
The 1964 hit song “Ringo Beat” by his mother was inspired by his son’s love of rock music.
He moved to Seattle in 1971 and started taking drum lessons from Bill Coleman Sr. At this period, Brown began songwriting in addition to playing the drums and piano.
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