On This Day in History: Billie Holiday dies

NOTE: I new Billie Holiday had a rocky life but NOTHING this tragic...

Singer Billie Holiday dies of cardiac failure at age 44. Despite her tragic life, she is considered one of the greatest jazz singers of all time.

Holiday, born Elinore Fagan, was the illegitimate daughter of guitar player Clarence Holiday. She grew up poor with her mother in Baltimore, sometimes living with relatives. She spent one year in a home for black girls. By age 12, Holiday was working as a prostitute and singing in the back rooms of bars. She and her mother went to New York when she was 13 or 14, and they were both arrested for prostitution in 1929, when Holiday was 14.

Throughout her tumultuous childhood and teen years, Holiday continued singing. In Harlem clubs, she had to walk from table to table, singing a verse for each small group, since the clubs had no microphones. To spice up these repetitive performances, she would improvise, singing each verse a little differently. At a club in 1933, a recording executive heard her and persuaded her to start making recordings. Between 1935 and 1942, recording with Teddy Wilson's orchestra, she made more than 100 records, including "Body and Soul," "Swing, Brother, Swing," and "Laughing at Life."

In 1937, she performed at Harlem's Apollo Theater. In 1937, she toured with Count Basie and with Artie Shaw in 1938. In 1939, she spent nine months singing regularly at a New York club called Cafe Society, where she became a star. Her emotionally wringing performance of "Strange Fruit," a song about a lynching, became legendary. She gravitated toward the poignant blues songs--"Lover Man," "I Cover the Waterfront," and "God Bless the Child" among them.

In the early 1940s, she fell in love with a series of abusive drug abusers. Always known for her outrageous behavior--drinking, cursing, and gambling--she became increasingly unpredictable. She began using heroin and in 1947, she was arrested for narcotics possession and spent a year in jail. When she got out in 1948, her license to perform in cabarets was suspended. Unable to play the clubs, she gave two smashing performances at Carnegie Hall instead. By the late '40s, though, she'd been arrested again, and years of alcohol and drug abuse began taking their toll on her career. Her voice suffered, and her erratic behavior barred her from many venues. She collapsed in May 1959 but managed to have heroin smuggled into the hospital for her, and she was arrested for possession. She died of cardiac failure, hastened by her excessive substance abuse, in 1959.

Beautiful Lady Day and Satchmo delight us with the Blue Are Brewin'


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