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.
Lady Day: The Best Of Billie Holiday is an ideal introduction to the Voice of Jazz in all its enduring glory. This incomparable collection draws on the 10-CD boxed set Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944) (CXK 85470), representing not only her finest work, but American jazz and pop singing at its zenith. Accompanied sublimely by a Who's Who of the Swing Era (including her soulmate Lester Young, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Buck Clayton, Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Jo Jones, and pianist-arranger Teddy Wilson, who was often at the helm when Holiday entered the studio), Billie Holiday masterfully renders a host of mostly-classic pop tunes. Fans are drawn to her musical triumphs and personal tragedies. She is a mysterious icon in the same vein as Miles Davis. Columbia possesses the first and finest recordings of her entire career! This material has never sounded clearer and more intimate!
