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Nancy King / Painting by Diane Russsell

08/05/2025

When Ella Fitzgerald met Nancy King in a dream

By TOM D'ANTONI // Nancy King died this morning. She was a diva among divas; the greatest Jazz singer Oregon ever produced. But did you know that Ella Fitzgerald came to her in a dream and saved her life? Here's what Nancy told me.

One afternoon about ten or fifteen years ago, I was sitting with Nancy King in The Nighthawk Cafe and Lounge on North Interstate Avenue. We ordered lunch and for reasons which escape me now, she began telling me about a time in her life when she career was going badly and she wanted to kill herself.

She was serious about it. So serious that she prepared, next to her bed, the drugs to make it happen.

She embellished the story as only Nancy King could. I sat across from her in rapt attention. She told of getting ready to lay down and die. I don't remember if she took some of the drugs or had some wine or just lay down and fell asleep.

Doesn't matter. The important thing is that she said she passed out or fell asleep.

While she was out, she said, Ella Fitzgerald, long dead, came to her. She said that Ella chided her for trying to kill herself, Ella said that Nancy had more to give, more songs to sing, that it was wrong to deny the world her talent.

And with a hug, that Nancy should wake up and get to work.

Nancy took much longer to tell that, longer than it took you to read it, and with poetry in the telling.

She did what Ella told her to. The world got to hear Nancy's singing for a long time after.

About the time Nancy was finished telling the story, the waiter returned. Nancy turned to him and gesturing to me, said, "I just told him the Ella Fitzgerald story.

It was at that moment I realized that she must have told it many times, even though it sounded to me like she was telling me for the first time. I suddenly realized that this was how she could sing the same song thousands of times, over many decades, with little changes and make it seem new.

Nancy King was a poet and a Jazz singer. 

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