Billie Holiday, 1915-1959
"I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life."
The Child: Eleanora “Billie Holiday” Fagan
Eleanora Fagan, the soulful songstress we know today as Billie Holiday, was born to Sarah Julia “Sadie” Fagan and Clarence Halliday in Philadelphia, PA. Billie's mother, Sadie, did not have support from her own parents who lived in Baltimore, so she made arrangements for young Billie to stay with her Baltimorean half sister, Eva Miller & Eva’s mother-in-law Martha Miller.
For the first 10 years of her life, Billie Holiday was cared for mostly by others, because her mother had taken a traveling job with the railroad.
Billie frequently skipped school and when she was 9 years old, she was sent to a Catholic “reform” school. She was released later that year (1925) into the custody of her mother. Soon after, Billie’s mother moved to New York City for employment, and Billie joined her there in 1929.
Though Billie’s life was not an easy one, she found escape in music and was soon recognized for her incredible singing style and interpretation of songs. Early musical influences for Billie came from listening to records by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, with whom she would later star in her first and only film feature, New Orleans (1947). In Billie’s composition, “Billie’s Blues” released in 1936, one can hear the influence of Bessie Smith.
Bessie Smith “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”
Louis Armstrong, “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans”
“Billie’s Blues,” written and performed by Billie Holiday
The Rising star: Billie Holiday
It was in New York City that Eleanora Fagan changed her name to Billie Holiday, inspired by her admiration of film star Billie Dove.
And it was at Covan’s, a small jazz club in Harlem, New York that 18 year old Billie Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond, who was instrumental in securing recording work with Clarinetist Benny Goodman and his Orchestra. Her first records with Benny, “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law,” sold 300 copies and “Riffin’ the Scotch” sold 5,000 copies.
"Her singing almost changed my music tastes and my musical life, because she was the first girl singer I'd come across who actually sang like an improvising jazz genius."
- John Hammond
“Your Mother’s Son-in-Law,” Billie Holiday and Benny Goodman and his Orchestra
“Riffin’ the Scotch,” Billie Holiday and Benny Goodman and his Orchestra
Billie’s unique and iconic singing style earned her the notice of many of her era’s greatest stars, with whom she would perform in various stages of her career.
Billie singing with her band in 1957
Duke Ellington & Billie Holiday
Louis Armstrong & Billie Holiday
In 1935, the same year as Anne Brown’s debut in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Billie recorded songs with Teddy Wilson, among others, and she also appeared in a nine minute short film with Duke Ellington called Symphony in Black.
Collaborations
Billie sang with Count Basie and his Orchestra in 1937. Billie took charge of her musical sets with the orchestra, which would often include George Gershwin’s Can’t Get Started and her hit of 1936, Summertime which is from Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.
"When she rehearsed with the band, it was really just a matter of getting her tunes like she wanted them, because she knew how she wanted to sound and you couldn't tell her what to do."
- Count Basie
Billie Holiday and saxophonist Lester Young formed a tight bond of friendship while performing with Count Basie’s Orchestra in the 1930s. It was Lester who gave Billie the nickname LADY DAY, and she in turn dubbed him PREZ. They performed together on and off over the years and were reunited in a TV special, The Sound of Jazz, that featured Billie’s own composition “Fine and Mellow” with Lester on saxophone in 1957.
“I always felt he was the greatest, so his name had to be the greatest. I started calling him the President.”
- Billie Holiday
The Legend: Lady Day
Despite her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, and troubles with the law, Billie Holiday captivated the world with her phenomenal artistry, and is considered one of the greatest musical talents of all time. She reached iconic status during her lifetime and her legacy lives on in the approximately 350 songs she sang, some of which she wrote herself.
In 1939, with her signature gardenia in her hair and her head tilted back in song, Billie debuted two of her most famous songs at the Café Society, New York City’s first racially integrated club — “Strange Fruit,” a heartbreaking protest against racism and injustice written by Abel Meeropol under the pseudonym Lewis Allen & "God Bless the Child written by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr.
Billie Holiday on “Strange Fruit” and racial injustice (her father was denied medical treatment in the South because he was black)
"It reminds me of how Pop died, but I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it, but because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the South”.
- Billie Holiday
Billie stated in her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, that she wrote God Bless the Child after an argument with her mother about money. The song received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1976, almost twenty years after Billie’s death.
The Legacy of Billie “Lady Day” Holiday
Billie Holiday received many accolades and honors during her lifetime. In 1944 and several years to follow, Billie was awarded the Gold Medal for Best Leading Female Vocalist from Esquire Magazine. In 1948 she received three curtain calls after her sold-out concert debut at Carnegie Hall, and she starred in a Broadway musical, Holiday on Broadway, that same year. She was a guest on several television shows, including The Tonight Show, The Comeback Special, the aforementioned The Sound Jazz, and others. A Memorial statue of Billie stands at the corner of Lafayette and Pennsylvania, just blocks from the Baltimore Anchor Institution, the Arch Social Club.
"People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it."
- Billie Holiday
Her life story has been immortalized in film [Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross (1972), and The United States vs. Billie Holiday, starring Andra Day (2021)], on Broadway and an HBO Film [Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill starring Audra McDonald (2014 & 2016 respectively)] and in countless biographies.
Billie died in 1959 and over 4,000 mourners attended her homegoing at St. Paul the Apostle Roman Catholic Church in New York City.