<back - BILLIE HOLIDAY aka LADY DAY - Born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, Billie Holiday spent much of her young life in Baltimore, Maryland. Raised primarily by her mother, Billie had only a tenuous connection with her father, who was a  guitarist in Fletcher Henderson’s band. Living in extreme poverty, Billie dropped out of school in the 5th grade and found a job running errands in a brothel. When she was 12, Billie moved with her mother to Harlem, where she was eventually arrested for prostitution.

Billie Holiday essentially grew up alone, feeling unloved and gaining a lifelong inferiority complex. That led to her taking great risks with her personal life, becoming increasingly more self-destructive. Desperate for money, Billie Holiday looked for work as a dancer at a Harlem speakeasy. When there wasn’t an opening, she immediately auditioned as a feature singer. Long interested in both Jazz and Blues, Billie Holiday wowed the owner and found herself singing at many popular Harlem clubs. She was only 20 when the well-connected Jazz writer and producer John Hammond Sr. heard her. Soon after, he reported that she was the greatest singer he had ever heard. With Hammond’s support, Billie Holiday spent much of the 1930s working with a range of great Jazz musicians, including Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, and most importantly, the saxophonist Lester Young. Together, Young and Holiday would create some of the greatest Jazz recordings of all time. They were close friends throughout their lives and giving each other their now-famous nicknames of 'Lady Day' and the 'Prez'. It was not until 1939, with her song 'Strange Fruit' that Billie Holiday found her real audience. A deeply powerful song about lynching, 'Strange Fruit' was a revelation in its disturbing and emotional condemnation of racism. Songs such as 'God Bless the Child' expressed not only her undeniable talent, but her incredible pain as well. While her popularity was growing, her personal life remained troubled. By the late 1940s, after the death of her mother, Billie’s heroin addiction became so bad she was repeatedly arrested and eventually checking herself into an institution. By 1950, the authorities denied her a license to perform in establishments selling alcohol. Though she continued to record and perform afterward, this marked the major turning point in her career. For the next 7 years, Billie Holiday would slip deeper into alcoholism and begin to lose control of her once perfect voice. In 1959, after the death of her good friend Lester Young and with almost nothing to her name, Billie Holiday died at 44. During her lifetime she had fought racism and sexism, and in the face of great personal difficulties triumphed through a deep artistic spirit. It is a tragedy that only after her death could a society realize that in her voice could be heard the true voice of the times. Billie Holiday was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1991. -LivinBlues
MP3- Gee Baby | Strange Fruit | God Bless the Child |