Billie Holida
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Born

  • April 7, 1915
  • Philadelphia, PA

Died

  • July 17, 1959
  • New York, NY

Real Name

  • Eleanora Fagan

Marriages

  • Jimmie Monroe (1941-57)
  • Louis McKay (1957-59)

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday is often considered the greatest jazz singer of all time. Her light, bluesy voice captivated the jazz world and influenced many of her contemporaries as well as future generations of vocalists. Holiday made her name performing songs that spoke of melancholy, dispair, and heartbreak. Sadly, in her case, life echoed art. Addictions to heroin and alcohol eventually sabotaged her career and caused her early death. She has since become a popular symbol of a bygone era and a monument to the seamier side of jazz.

Much of Holiday's early life is obscure. In her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, she paints an exaggerated, fanciful, and self-serving portrait of her youth. According to Holiday, her mother was only 13 years old when she born. Her father, who was 15, abandoned them shortly after her birth. Her mother later moved to New York, leaving Holiday behind with relatives who abused her. Holiday eventually followed her in 1928 and went to work for a brothel, where she was arrested for prostitution.

During the early 1930s Holiday worked in Harlem clubs as a singer and dancer. Her big break came when she landed a singing job at the popular jazz spot Pod and Jerry's Log Cabin. This led to other important engagements, including a stint at Monette's in 1933, where she was heard by wealthy jazz enthusiast John Hammond. Hammond quickly realized her talents and arranged studio time. Throughout the rest of the 1930s and into the early 1940s Holiday recorded with a variety of musicians, including Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Ben Webster, and Teddy Wilson. In 1937 she worked with Count Basie and in 1938 briefly joined Artie Shaw's orchestra.

Though Holiday impressed those in the jazz community popular notice eluded her until her 1939 Commodore recording of ''Strange Fruits,'' a song which spoke about the lynching of blacks. Later recordings, such as ''Gloomy Sunday'' and ''Lover Man'' gradually began to win her a wider audience, and by the mid-1940s she had emerged as a major star. Holiday's private life had begun to deteriorate by that point however. Her drug and alcohol addictions, as well as her abusive relationships, took their toll. In 1947 she was arrested on drug charges and spent a year in prison. Due to her felony conviction, when she was released New York authorities denied her the necessary license to perform in clubs that served alcohol, effectively shutting her out of every major jazz establishment in the city.

Holiday's career began to decline in the 1950s. She continued to perform, however her addictions worsened, and her singing voice began to fail. She passed away in 1959, almost penniless.