Billie Holiday (1915-59) is rightfully considered one of the greatest of all jazz singers. Though her voice had limited range – she was no virtuoso vocalist like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan – her singing had an emotional impact that is perhaps unmatched. She was born Eleanora in Baltimore to teenage parents – jazz guitarist, Clarence Holiday, and Sadie Fagan. She had an extremely difficult childhood, raped at age 10, she had left school by the age of 11, and spent four months in jail for prostitution at age 14. Running errands at a brothel had at least exposed her to the records of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong.
From 1929, she began to sing in small clubs in Harlem, and in one of these she was discovered by John Hammond, who arranged for her to record for Brunswick in a band led by pianist Teddy Wilson. The sides they recorded together in 1935 were successful enough for further recording sessions to be booked. Over the next six years Holiday made some of the most important jazz vocal recordings of the swing era. Among the leading musicians who peppered these sessions were trumpeters like Roy Eldridge, Buck Clayton and Harry Edison, drummers like Jo Jones and Kenny Clarke, and on many of the best tracks, saxophonist Lester Young. Young nicknamed Bille ‘Lady Day’, she called him ‘Pres’ and for a period they were inseparable.
She worked with the Count Basie Orchestra for a few months, before joining Artie Shaw as the first black woman to tour with a white orchestra. This ground breaking development was sadly hampered by prejudice at every turn and though she, Shaw and the musicians all tried to make it work, the experience ended up a negative one for Holiday.
In 1939, she worked at Cafe Society, an integrated club, where she found an audience who would accept her without compromise. It was here that she first sang the extraordinary ‘Strange Fruit’. She also began to write songs, including the blues ‘Fine And Mellow’ and, with composer Arthur Herzog Jr, ‘Don’t Explain’ and ‘God Bless The Child’.
By the mid-1940s her recordings were beginning to sell well. ‘God Bless The Child’ made the Billboard charts in 1941 and was followed by ‘Trav’lin Light’ (1942), and ‘Lover Man’ (1944) with its ‘B’ side, ‘That Old Devil Called Love’. Despite some successes, Holiday was addicted to heroin. She was hounded by the police, and ‘busted’ in 1947, spending a year in prison. Worse that the jail time was losing her ‘cabaret card, which prevented her from working in any venue with a liquor licence. A comeback show in 1948 at the Carnegie Hall was a great success, but another narcotics charge followed swiftly.
Holiday published an autobiography ‘Lady Sings The Blues’ in 1956, and returned to Carnegie Hall the same year. In 1957, she was reunited with Lester Young for a performance of ‘Fine and Mellow’ on CBS’s The Sound of Jazz programme. In 1958 she was recorded with a string orchestra conducted by Ray Ellis on the album ‘Lady in Satin’. Holiday’s voice is somewhat ravaged by this point, but the juxtaposition of her heart breaking vocals and the lush backing is poignant.
Suffering from liver and heart disease, she was persuaded to check into hospital in May 1959, two months after attending Lester Young’s funeral. Still not free of state persecution, the police raided her hospital room, arrested her and handcuffed her to the bed. After a string of abusive marriages, and cheating accountants, she had 70 cents in the bank when she died on July 17th.
Key Recordings:
The Quintessential Billie Holiday, volumes 1-9 (1933-1942) (Columbia)
Lady In Satin (Columbia 1958)