[reg45]

Is Beyoncé such a one-trick-pony that she could not have spent a few hours listening to old Ella Fitzgerald recordings and tried to sing in the style of the era?

[dfwgator]

Why sing just one note, when you can sing ten notes?

[kabumpo]

Ella Fitzgerald has nothing to do with that period. The novel is set in the 1920s. She wasn’t born until 1917, and didn’t begin her singing career until 1934, in the Great Depression.
The 1920s Saw the birth of jazz, but there weren’t really female jazz vocalists. There were great black blues singers like Bessie Smith, but the white vocalists of time - Ruth Etting, Helen Morgan - were singing popular music, jazz per se.

[Fiji Hill]

Is Beyoncé such a one-trick-pony that she could not have spent a few hours listening to old Ella Fitzgerald recordings and tried to sing in the style of the era?

Ella Fitzgerald (B. 1918) began her career in the mid-1930's. To capture the 1922 sound, Beyoncé should have listened to Marion Harris, Edna Brown or Fanny Brice.