Billie Holiday | Artist
Eleanora Fagan aka Billie Holiday, was an American jazz singer born 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a career spanning nearly thirty years and was a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. As a young teenager, Holiday started singing in nightclubs in Harlem and was spotted by the producer John Hammond and signed to the Brunswick Records label in 1935. She delivered many hit records and was picked up by the more prestigious Columbia label. She continued to sell records and perform sell-out concerts, including Carnegie Hall on several occasions, however her personal life was marred by drug abuse for which she served prison sentences. Her autobiography "Lady Sings The Blues" touched on her difficult upbringing and was made into a movie starring Diana Ross in 1972. Holiday died of liver failure in 1959 with only $1,000 to her name but posthumously her work was re-appraised and received the recognition it deserved. In 1961 she was voted to the Down Beat Hall Of Fame and soon after Columbia reissued nearly a hundred of her early records. Outstanding albums include Billie Holiday (1947), Billie Holiday Sings (1952), Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Body and Soul (1957), Songs for Distingué Lovers (1958), Lady in Satin (1958), All or Nothing at All (1959) and Carnegie Hall Concert Live (1961). Holiday was the product of a very turbulent childhood. Born out of wedlock to teenage couple Clarence Halliday and Sarah "Sadie" Fagan, her mother was forced to move to Philadelphia at age 19, after she was evicted from her parents' home for becoming pregnant. Growing up, Holiday frequently skipped school which resulted in her being brought before the juvenile court at age nine. She was sent to the House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school for girls, where the nuns locked her in a room with a dead girl overnight as punishment for misbehavior. The experience traumatized her, and for years she would "dream about it and wake up hollering and screaming". After nine months, she was released back to her mother. Sadie had opened a restaurant, the East Side Grill, and mother and daughter worked long hours there. Billie dropped out of school at age 11 and found extra jobs running errands in a brothel, and scrubbing the floors of neighborhood homes. Holiday won four Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and ranked fourth in Rolling Stone's list of "200 Greatest Singers of All Time". All of these accolades came well after she had passed away.
Artist Website: billieholiday.com
Featured Albums: Billie Holiday
Related Artists: Ella Fitzgerald, Paul Whiteman Orchestra
Collections: Women of Note, Music Visionaries
