Billie Holiday

Born: April 7, 1915. Philadelphia
Died: July 17, 1959. New York

American jazz singer. Holiday had a distinctive vocal style and influenced later generations of jazz singers. She was one of the first African American singers to perform with white musicians.

Billie Holiday titled her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, and indeed her life seems to have embodied the tragedy that is the subject of blues. Her father abandoned her at an early age, and soon after, her mother moved to New York, leaving her to live with relatives in Baltimore. At one point she worked in a brothel and was arrested and jailed for prostitution. Even at the height of her success she faced tremendous difficulties. She became addicted to heroin, abused alcohol, and after an arrest on drug charges lost her cabaret card—meaning that she could not appear in nightclubs in New York. She suffered as well from a string of abusive relationships with men, and the last years of her life were spent in an ultimately failed attempt to rehabilitate her career. Yet within the confines of her misery she created a body of work that stands out as one of the most brilliant in the history of jazz.

Born Eleanora Fagan, Holiday took her stage name from one of her favorite actresses, Billie Dove, and from her father, Clarence Holiday. She began appearing in New York clubs in the early 1930s and was soon noticed by the producer John Hammond, who arranged a series of recording sessions for her. By 1935 she was recording regularly with bands organized and led by Teddy Wilson. In these sessions, she recorded with some of the greatest players of the day, including saxophonist Lester Young, who gave her the nickname "Lady Day." By the mid-1940s she had begun to build a wider following, especially among white intellectuals. She appeared with white musicians such as Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman and began to break through the color barriers that dominated American society. But even as her career flourished, her personal life began to crumble. In 1947 she was arrested and jailed on drug charges. Her attempts to revive her career were hampered by the enormous toll her self-abuse had taken on her voice. Her final recordings, while still having the artistry that marked her early work, are difficult to listen to because of the sound of her damaged voice.

Few voices grab your attention as much and as solidly as Holiday's. Hers is a unique blend of hard edges and youthful simplicity, and even though she had a small voice, she injected an incredible amount of emotional power into her songs. She freely acknowledged her musical debt to Louis Armstrong, and she showed a similar approach to phrasing and a rhythmic freedom unusual for singers at the time. But what stands out most is the basic quality of her voice—both innocent and injured. Her exaggerated approach to diction and her freedom in bending the pitches of a melody gave her voice what we would call today "attitude."

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