HOLIDAY, BILLIE

One of the most innovative jazz singers of all time, Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915–July 17, 1959) began her legendary singing career in Harlem nightclubs at the height of the Great Depression, catching the public's attention with her unique diction, phrasing, and emotive vocals.

Born Eleanora Fagan Gough in 1915 to teenage parents, Holiday spent her early years in poverty in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, a jazz guitarist with Fletcher Henderson's band, never supported his family. Young Holiday dropped out of school in the fifth grade to run errands for a brothel. In 1927, she and her mother moved to New York City. Desperate for money, she auditioned as a dancer in a Harlem speakeasy, Pod and Jerry's Log Cabin, but was hired as a singer instead. Growing up imitating Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, singing came naturally to Holiday.

In 1933, jazz writer and producer John Hammond heard Holiday perform. Impressed with her bluesy renditions of jazz standards, he signed her to Columbia Records. The Depression created financial and racial difficulties for many African Americans, but black artists prospered during the 1930s because New Deal legislation established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935, providing unemployed artists and writers with work. The WPA contributed to the flourishing cultural scene in Harlem, in which Holiday was an integral figure. She spent much of the 1930s performing and touring with jazz legends Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington, but it was her collaboration with saxophonist Lester Young, who nicknamed her "Lady Day," that highlighted her unique vocal talents, jumpstarting her recording career. Between 1935 and 1938, she released approximately eighty songs marketed for the black jukebox audience. In 1935, she made her first of many appearances at Harlem's Apollo Theater, and in 1939 she became the first black performer to integrate Artie Shaw's band.

The same year, she performed her trademark song "Strange Fruit," a powerful condemnation of lynching, to an integrated audience at the Café Society, a New York nightclub. The song came to represent the black artist's experience with racism. Increasing racial hostilities slowed Holiday's touring and hindered her commercial success. She spent the majority of the 1940s in New York performing and recording hit songs for Decca Records to avoid the violence of the South. In 1946, she appeared alongside Louis Armstrong in the film New Orleans, but expressed anger over having to portray a domestic. Her popularity as a singer afforded her little protection from the racial discrimination of the era.

Although a success professionally, addiction and abusive relationships marred her personal life. She died in 1959 of complications from drug addiction. Despite poverty, racism, and sexism, Holiday remains one of the most influential American singers of all time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clarke, Donald. Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday. 1994.

Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. "Or Does It Explode?" Black Harlem in the Great Depression. 1991.

Holiday, Billie, with William Duffy. Lady Sings the Blues. 1956.

Margolick, David. Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. 2000.