Born: Eleanora Fagan Gough, on 7-April-1915, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Father: Clarence Holiday (jazz guitarist and banjo player). Mother: Sadie Fagan. Died: New York at the age of 44.
Stage name: Billie Holiday, after Billie Dove, an early movie star.
Nickname: "Lady Day"
Even with no formal musical training, Billie Holiday made her professional singing debut in Harlem nightclubs in 1931. She made her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with "Your Mother's Son-In-Law."
Her 1939 version of "Strange Fruit," a song about lynching, was described as the most haunting and sad "expression of protest against man's inhumanity to man that has ever been made in the form of vocal jazz."
"You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music." -- Billie
Holiday.
This greatest-hits collection accompanies Ken Burns's 10-part documentary Jazz and shows that though she never practiced the vocal gymnastics of an Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday was unquestionably among the greatest jazz singers, with a subtle inventiveness in phrasing and note choice and a tremendous capacity to swing. This collection covers virtually the entire career of a fascinating and troubled artist, beginning with her sparkling mid-1930s recordings with pianist Teddy Wilson and the cream of swing-era horn players. While those fresh-voiced early records already indicate Holiday's capacity for conveying the nuances of a lyric, her work soon took on greater drama. "Strange Fruit," a 1939 account of a lynching, marked a breakthrough in the popular song, as well as in Holiday's career, and her controlled intensity only becomes more marked on signature songs like the wistful "God Bless the Child" and the moving "Don't Explain." Holiday's voice deteriorated in the later 1950s, but performances like "Fine and Mellow" show that her emotional power and musicality remained intact. --Stuart Broomer
