Holiday, Billie, 1915–59, American singer, b. Baltimore. Her original name was Eleanora Fagan. She began singing professionally in 1930, and after performing with numerous bands—especially those of Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw—she embarked in 1940 on a career of solo appearances in nightclubs and theaters. Her highly personal approach to a song, her individual phrasing and intonation, and the often rough but highly emotional quality of her voice soon earned her a supreme position among modern jazz singers. Although she was financially successful, she suffered many personal disasters, complicated by the drug addiction that she could not overcome and that eventually destroyed her career and hastened her death. She was also known as Lady Day.

Bibliography

See her sometimes factually inaccurate autobiography (1956); biographies by D. Clarke (1994) and S. Nicholson (1995); D. Margolick, Strange Fruit (2000).

Holiday, Billie

orig. Eleanora Fagan

Billie Holiday, 1958.

(credit: Reprinted with permission of Down Beat magazine)

(born April 7, 1915, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—died July 17, 1959, New York, N.Y.) U.S. jazz singer. She was “discovered” while she was singing in a Harlem nightclub in 1933. Recordings with Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington led to a series of outstanding small-group records (1935–42) featuring musicians such as Lester Young (who gave her the sobriquet Lady Day) and Teddy Wilson. Exposure with the big bands of Count Basie (1937) and Artie Shaw (1938) brought her greater public attention; for the rest of her life she would remain one of the best known of jazz singers. Among the songs identified with her were “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child.” Personal crises and drug and alcohol addiction plagued her career, and she was incarcerated in 1947 on narcotics charges. Her voice could reveal a sweet, often sensual expressiveness or disturbing bitterness in the service of a lyric: her clear projection of emotion represents a landmark of personal expression.

Holiday, (Eleanora) Billie “Lady Day” (1915–59) jazz musician; born in Baltimore, Md. She is the most widely celebrated and influential singer in jazz history, but also one of its most tragic figures, her career hampered by drug addiction, prison sentences, and racial injustice. Between 1933–42, she made a brilliant series of small group recordings featuring Teddy Wilson and Lester Young and appeared with the big bands of Count Basie and Artie Shaw. Her 1939 recording of "Strange Fruit," which depicted a lynching, was a cause célèbre. She appeared in several films, including New Orleans (1946), but by the end of the 1940s her voice had begun to deteriorate, taking on a fragile huskiness that initially added to her emotional appeal. She continued to record and appear as a nightclub performer until 1959. Her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, was published in 1956 and was the basis for a 1973 film biography.