Billie Holiday (1915–59,) born Eleanora Fagan, was an American jazz singer. One of the most influential singers in jazz, she was one of the first to take up the subtleties of jazz phrasing in a serious manner.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Holiday Worked as a singer in New York clubs in the early 1930s. Her soulful voice and remarkable jazz interpretation of popular songs led to her work with clarinetist Benny Goodman’s band in 1933 and recording sessions with such leading soloists as Teddy Wilson and Lester Young. They bestowed her familiar nickname, Lady Day.
Holiday’s memorable ballads include ‘Easy Living’ (1937,) ‘Yesterdays’ (1939,) and ‘God Bless the Child’ (1941.) In the late 1930s, she worked with pianist Count Basie and clarinetist Artie Shaw. During the 1940s, she appeared in several films (including New Orleans (1947) with trumpeter Louis Armstrong.)
By the end of the 1940s, Holiday fell victim to drug addiction. In 1947, she was arrested for a narcotics violation and spent a year in a rehabilitation center. Her voice deteriorated in the 1950s. Yet, she continued to make absorbing recordings until late in her career, without ever recapturing the glorious freshness and spontaneity of her pre-war music.
Holiday’s autobiography is Lady Sings the Blues (1956; with William Dufty;) it was made into a motion picture starring Diana Ross in 1972.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Billie Holiday
You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
—Billie Holiday
Topics: Slavery
If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung. If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you’re crazy. It can fix you so you can’t play nothing or sing nothing.
—Billie Holiday
Topics: Drugs
I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.
—Billie Holiday
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
—Billie Holiday
Topics: Singing
Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you – and kill you the long, slow, hard way.
—Billie Holiday
Topics: Drugs
Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.
—Billie Holiday
Topics: Adversity
People don’t understand the sort of fight it takes to record what you want, to record the way you want to record it.
—Billie Holiday
If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t got nothin’.
—Billie Holiday
In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it’s the worst kind of hell for those who love you.
—Billie Holiday
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