Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday (1915-1959), one of the greatest jazz and blues singers of all time, also known as Lady Day. She was noted for her distinctive phrasing and a seemingly relaxed rhythm which often found her artfully lagging behind the beat of a song. Her best music also had a profound emotional intensity. Born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, she spent her early years in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a jazz guitarist. Her childhood was impoverished and marked by a series of traumatic incidents. She stayed in a number of reform schools and correctional facilities, before moving to New York in the late 1920s. An avowed admirer of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, she began singing in a cabaret bar in Queens, New York, before developing her style in Harlem nightclubs. She responded to many of the technical demands of jazz music and was skilled at improvisation, but she also appreciated the sentimental power of blues music.

The music company executive John Hammond booked her first recording sessions in 1933, featuring the band leader Benny Goodman. This produced the track “Your Mother’s Son-In-Law”. In her early records she performed essentially as a band member, taking solos alongside the other musicians, but over time her voice became the prime focus of the recordings. While the themes of her youthful songs were often depressing, she had a bright tone to her voice. A blues-inflected ballad, “My Man” summarized this mixture of woe and happiness. This balance changed as the circumstances of her life became more difficult. She became a popular performer at The Apollo theatre in Harlem and the wearing of white gardenias in her hair became a stylistic trademark. She sang with various orchestras, including those of Count Basie and Artie Shaw, and during her tours across America she experienced numerous instances of racial prejudice. In 1936 she met the saxophone player Lester Young, and their work together is widely considered to be some of Billie’s best. This includes “Fine And Mellow” and “The Man I Love”. She also added a sense of gravitas to show tunes such as “I Loves You Porgy” and “Summertime”. In 1939 she had a long residency at a multi-racial New York nightclub called Café Society and it was here that she perfected her more intimate style, accompanied by a small band. At this venue she introduced a song called “Strange Fruit”, which told the story of a racist lynching in the south of America. Written by Abel Meeropol, the song was associated with Billie Holiday for the rest of her career, and the song’s vivid images provided much scope for her story-telling skills. Thereafter, she was valued by the liberal intelligentsia and political activists. Her new status may also have hastened the attention from the law enforcement agencies, who began to pursue her for drugs-related offences.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Holiday appeared in clubs around the United States with great success. She also toured Europe, where she attracted an ardent following. Songs such as “Good Morning Heartache” and “That Ole Devil Called Love” were praised for their languid style while “Lover Man”, released in 1944, featured an expansive orchestral arrangement. She took a singing role in a film, New Orleans (1947). Her voice increasingly showed the effects of her long-term heroin addiction, which led to a sentence in prison in 1947-1948. One of her last recordings was an album called Lady In Satin (1958), which revealed that while her vocal register was greatly diminished, she was still able to express herself fluently. She died in Metropolitan Hospital, New York, while under arrest for possession of illegal drugs. Her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues (1956), inspired a 1972 film of the same name that featured Diana Ross in the central role. Her style has influenced numerous singers, including Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone.