Billie Holiday, Downbeat, New York, New York, February 1947
Courtesy Library of Congress (gottlieb.04251)
Billie Holiday is considered by many critics and fans to have been one of the most important jazz vocalists of the twentieth century. Her difficult life of poverty, abusive relationships, and drug abuse helped give her voice a deep, raw emotion that was expressed in the music she sang.
Billie Holiday was born Eleanora fa*gan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to teenaged unmarried parents, Sarah Julia “Sadie” fa*gan and Clarence Holiday. Not long after Eleanora’s birth, Clarence Holiday abandoned his family to pursue a career as a jazz banjo and guitar player.
Because her mother worked as a maid on passenger railroads, Holiday was raised by her half-sister’s mother-in-law, Martha Miller. Holiday frequently skipped school and was often brought before juvenile court. By the age of eleven, Holiday had dropped out of school. After she fought off an attempted rape in 1926, she was held in protective custody and released in 1927 at the age of twelve.
By the age of fourteen, Holiday was a prostitute in New York’s Harlem. After a brief period when she and her mother were in jail for prostitution, Holiday escaped that life by singing in Harlem nightclubs. She changed her name, choosing her first name after a favorite movie actress Billie Dove, and adopting the surname of her absent musician father Clarence Holiday.
In 1933, record producer John Hammond heard Holiday sing and arranged for her to make her debut recording in November of that year at the age of eighteen with the Benny Goodman Band. Her recording, “Riffin’ the Scotch,” sold five thousand copies and by 1935, Holiday had signed with Brunswick Records. She teamed with Bandleader Teddy Wilson and produced a number of jazz hits. She also reconnected with jazz saxophonist Lester Young, whom she first met in 1934. Young gave her the nickname “Lady Day,” and she in turn called him “Prez.”
Beginning in 1937, Holiday worked with Count Basie and by 1938 with Artie Shaw, becoming the first black woman singer to tour with a mostly white band. On April 20, 1939, Holiday recorded her most controversial song, “Strange Fruit,” which was an unabashed protest of Southern lynching. It became her second biggest selling record but it also prompted a visit from the FBI. Her most popular recording, “God Bless the Child,” came when Holiday’s mother, who became a restaurant owner, refused to give Holiday money. She reportedly stormed out the restaurant saying, “God bless the child that’s got his own.” A band member heard the words, turned them into a song, and Holiday recorded it in 1940. “God Bless the Child” became Holiday’s only million-selling record.
After 1940, Holiday moved away from jazz and began to record ballads such as “Lover Man,” “Don’t Explain,” and “Good Morning Heartache.” She performed at venues such as a sold-out Carnegie Hall in 1948 and later that year starred in a Broadway musical titled Holiday on Broadway. Yet her success was not enduring. Often recounting the misery in her personal life in song during this period from several abusive husbands, she expressed her emotions in her voice and created extraordinarily powerful recordings against a background of despair and depression. Her addiction to heroin, however, sent her life in a rapid downward spiral in the late 1940s. She was repeatedly arrested and eventually lost her cabaret license in 1950.
Holiday’s last major hit, “Fine and Mellow,” was released in 1957. By that point, the years of addiction had taken a toll on her body and voice. Forty-four-year-old Billie Holiday died on July 17, 1959, of cirrhosis of the liver in Metropolitan Hospital in New York City.
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Cite this entry in APA format:
Butler, G. (2007, June 16). Billie Holiday (1915-1959). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/holliday-billie-1915-1959/
Source of the author's information:
Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 1956); Robert O’Meally, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992): David Margolick, Strange Fruit: Billie Holliday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000); http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/holiday_b.html.
FAQs
Billie Holiday (1915–1959) was an American jazz singer, songwriter, actress, and an icon in American culture. Billie Holiday was born in Philadelphia to a teenage couple Sarah Julia "Sadie" fa*gan and Clarence Holiday.
What is the controversial song Billie Holiday sings? ›
"Strange Fruit" is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol published in 1937. The song protests the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees.
What happened to Billie Holiday when she was a child? ›
Born Eleanora fa*gan in Baltimore (or some say Philadelphia) in 1915, Holiday's childhood was marred by horrific abuse—despite the best efforts of her beloved mother, Sadie, who was only 13 when she had Holiday. Always a self-starter, Holiday began singing as a child, while cleaning neighbors' homes for money.
How old was Billie Holiday when she was discovered? ›
At age 18, after gathering more life experience than most adults, Holiday was spotted by producer John Hammond with whom she cut her first record as part of a studio group led by clarinetist Benny Goodman – then on the verge of his own superstardom.
Why did Billie Holiday change her name to Billie Holiday? ›
Thus, from seemingly nowhere, a new star was born out of Eleanora fa*gan who had long since changed her name to Billie Holiday – Billie in honor of her favorite actress and Baltimorean Billie Dove and Holiday due to her infatuation with her erratic father and the recognition the name could earn her in Harlem's nightlife ...
Was Billie Holiday Religious? ›
Iconic jazz artist Billie Holiday received her only formal vocal instruction at the Catholic convent where she was sent to live as a child. She received the sacraments, prayed the rosary, and maintained a friendship with Paulist “jazz priest” Norman O'Connor until the end of her life.
Why is Billie Holiday so famous? ›
Why was Billie Holiday significant? Billie Holiday was one of the greatest jazz singers from the 1930s to the '50s. She had no formal musical training, but, with an instinctive sense of musical structure and a deep knowledge of jazz and blues, she developed a singing style that was deeply moving and individual.
How many husbands did Billie Holiday have? ›
| Billie Holiday |
|---|
| Years active | c. 1930–1959 |
| Spouses | Jimmy Monroe ( m. 1941; div. 1947) Joe Guy ( m. 1951; div. 1957) Louis McKay ( m. 1957) |
| Musical career |
| Genres | Jazz swing blues traditional pop |
12 more rowsBy the time she appeared at Harlem's famous Apollo Theatre, aged 19, she was billing herself as Billie Holiday. The young singer was profane, promiscuous, alcoholic, unpredictable and fearless.
How old was Billie Holiday before she died? ›
After years of substance abuse, Holiday's body had grown weary of the abuse and she died from heart failure on July 17, 1959, at age 44.
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.
What was Billie Holiday's quote? ›
I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own. You've got to have something to eat, and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.
Where is Billie Holiday buried? ›
Detailed map of New Saint Raymond's Cemetery in Bronx NY. Holiday's burial site is in the St. Paul section, Row 56, Grave #29. Grave marker of Billie Holiday.
What is Billie Holiday's favorite color? ›
Billie was 22 years old at the time. As I mentioned earlier, this article states her favorite colors as being "black, white, and green", but most of what she has in her dressing room that evening strays from this.
How old was Billie Holiday's mom when she was born? ›
He was eighteen, she was seventeen, and I was three.” Szwed explains, “When Billie was born, her mother was nineteen, her father seventeen. They never married . . . She was born not in Baltimore but in Philadelphia. Some questioned her claim of having been raped at age ten.”
Why is Billie called Billie? ›
Name Meaning
"Bi" (비) in Korean means rain, in reference to the purple rain; "11" pertains to the eleventh day and eleven chimes; and the girls "lie" to the world about Billlie. Apart from the lore, the "B" in Billlie is meant to represent a persons "B-side", the hidden inner self.
What is Billie Holiday's most famous quote? ›
1. “The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.”
Where is Billie Holiday's grave? ›
Detailed map of New Saint Raymond's Cemetery in Bronx NY. Holiday's burial site is in the St. Paul section, Row 56, Grave #29. Grave marker of Billie Holiday.
What happened to Jimmy Fletcher? ›
Jimmy Fletcher dead after being struck by car Friday in Akron.
Did Billie Holiday sing in a church? ›
But for a scant year in early adolescence, just before or around the time she began singing in cabarets, Billie Holiday did sing in church: the Catholic chapel of a convent reformatory, the Baltimore House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls.
