There’s a reason they call Ella Fitzgerald the “First Lady of Song” -- because the world had never seen anything like her when she burst onto the music scene in the 1930s, and no one has ever done it quite like her since then. With a powerful and commanding yet beautiful and delicate voice that could transition effortlessly from a jazz standard to a sultry lounge song to a scatting swing tune, Fitzgerald carved her place among not just the greatest jazz singers of all time, but among the greatest singers to ever grace a stage anywhere. Northeastern University Professor Emerita and Music Historian Judith Tick provides the first full-scale biography of the so-called “Queen of Jazz” since her death in 1996 in the new book “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song.” Tick paints the arc of Fitzgerald’s career from her sometimes troubled childhood in Yonkers, New York to her discovery in 1935 by Benny Carter and Chick Webb, the latter of whom would make her the singer of his band, to touring the world in the 1940s with Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz at the Philharmonic, to her exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s and beyond, during which time she released her own spins on the works of greats like Cole Porter and Duke Ellington.

Today on AirTalk, Professor Tick joins Larry Mantle to talk about her new biography of Ella Fitzgerald -- and of course, we’ll listen to a few of the songs that defined her career.