Exposé Billie Holliday

Billie Holiday

Eleanora Fagan was born on April, 7th 1915 in Philadelphia. She is known as Billie Holiday and her nickname was « Lady Day ». She was an American jazz musician, singer and song writer. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education. How did Billie Holiday became a symbolic legend of jazz while she came from a difficult and violent environment ? Billie’s father did not live with her and her mother was a jazz banjo player and guitarist. Billie Holiday had a difficult chilhood. Billie frequently skipped school, and her truancy resulted in her being brought before the juvenile court when she was 9 years old. She was sent to the House of Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school. By the age of 11, she dropped out of school. In December 1926 a neighbor attempted to rape her.  As a young teenager, Billie started singing in nightclubs in Harlem. She took her professional pseudonym from Billie Dove, an actress she admired and the musician Clarence Holiday, her probable father. The producer John Hammond said about her « Her singing almost changed my music tastes and my musical life, because she was the first girl singer I would come across who actually sang like an improvising jazz genius. ». He compared her to Louis Armstrong and said she had a good sense of lyric content at her young age.  By the late 1930’s Billie Holiday had toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, and became an etablished artist in the recording industry. She was recording for Columbia in the late 1930’s when she was proposed the song « Strange Fruit », this song based on a poem about lynching written by a schoolteacher from the Bronx. Holiday’s popularity increased after « Strange Fruit », she received a mention in Time magazine. The FBI started to intimidate her after this song because it’s a powerful attack against racism in the South of the USA. In Sptember 1943, Life magazine wrote « She has the most distinct style of any popular vocalist and is imitated by other vocalists. » But she had also a dark side : In 1947 Billie Holiday was arrested for possession of narcotics in her New York apartment. She pleaded guilty and she was sentenced to prison. She was released on March 1948 thanks to her good behavior.  On March 27, 1948 she played Carnegie Hall to a sold-out crowd. Her popularity was unusual. Billie Holiday was arrested again on January 1949. She married de trombonist Jimmy Monroe on 1941 but she became involved with the trumpeter Joe Guy who was her drug dealer. By the 1950’s, Billie Holiday’s drug abuse, drinking and relationships with abusive men caused her health to deteriorate, it had effects on her voice.  On May, 1959 she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York for treatment of liver desease and heart desease. She was arrested and hancuffed for drug possession as she lay dying, her hospital room was raided and she was placed under police guard. She died in 1959 of pulmonary edema and heart failure. Her main successes was Strange Fruit, Lover Man, God bless the Child, Gloomy Sunday, Billie’s Blues. Billie Holiday is an heroine because she is a jazz legend, her music passes on to other generations, she despite her difficult childhood and drugs and alcohol problems. She was a commited artist when she sang Strange Fruit denouncing violence against Afro-Americans. She is the Jazz diva hero, admire for her bravery and personal life achievements.

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