Billie Holiday, A Seminal Jazz Artist
Lady Day, an Emotive and Innovative Interpreter of the Blues
Jun 26, 2009
She was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but was raised in Baltimore. In 1928, Holiday moved to New York City with her mother, Sadie Fagan. Billie’s father is believed to be Clarence Holiday, an itinerant, horn player.
In the 1930’s, Billie began singing for tips in small, Harlem nightclubs. In 1933 while working at Monettes, club promoter John Hammond discovered Billie Holiday. Hammond soon had her recording with the Benny Goodman Band and got her bookings in top nightclubs like the Apollo Theatre.
Billie Holiday Creates Her Legacy
In 1936, Billie was hired as a vocalist for a small band fronted by Teddy Wilson. Together they recorded for the rapidly, growing jukebox market. Over the next six years, Holiday recorded a music compilation that cemented her status as a jazz and blues singer.
At one time or another virtually every major musician of the day recorded with Billie Holiday, including: Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Hodges, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Lester Young became a good friend and mentor and gave Billie the nickname, “Lady Day.”
In March of 1937 while working at the Onyx Club, Billie joined the Count Basie band. By this time, however, Billie was revelling in her success by partying, drinking, and smoking marijuana. She often showed up late for work and became temperamental. In February of 1938, Count Basie let her go.
Her musical reputation secure, bandleader Arte Shaw quickly hired Billie. Shaw was the first white bandleader to challenge the color barrier. When the band traveled through the south, however, Billie was not allowed into hotels and restaurants and had to eat and sleep on the bus. She fought with Shaw over what she felt was his lack of support and they parted on bad terms.
Billie Perfroms and Records, Strange Fruit
In the late 1930s, John Hammond introduced Billie to Barney Josephson, owner of Café Society, a multiracial nightclub. This was the venue Billie Holiday had been looking for; the clientele consisted of well-connected New York society. Billie soon became a nationally, known singer and introduced an anti-racist song called, “Strange Fruit” to the amenable audience. The Strange Fruit were the black bodies hanging from cottonwood trees. Sang in her intensely, plaintive voice, the song became a symbol of black oppression.
Strange Fruit, was recorded at Commodore Records because Billie's label, Columbia felt the song was too controversial.
In her prime, Billie Holiday was a stunning beauty. She dressed in elegant gowns and always wore a large, white gardenia in her hair. Billie's taste in men was flawed, however, she married or had relationships with a succession of drug-addicted men who abused her, and introduced her to heroin. By 1956, Holiday’s health and career began to show the effects of her alcohol and drug abuse.
Billie's Innate, Musical Gifts
In his book, “The Making of Jazz,” page 310, James Collier describes the two secret, vocal qualities that made Billie Holiday, the greatest jazz singer who ever lived. "One was her grasp of the essential quality of lifting the melody away from the beat. Second, she knew somewhere in her gut not to over stretch emotion--art form and content must be in balance."
In 1956, Billie Holiday, co-wrote her autobiography with William Duffy, " Lady Sings the Blues,” published by Doubleday & Company, New York, 1956. Billie continued to record, but never regained her previous popularity.
Billie Holiday died of cirrhosis of the liver in a New York City hospital on July 17, 1959.
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