Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan, April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.

Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever. She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing "Easy Living", "Good Morning Heartache", and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording.

Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan (née Harris). Her father, Clarence Halliday (Holiday), a musician, did not marry or live with her mother. Her mother had moved to Philadelphia when thirteen, after being ejected from her parents' home in Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore for becoming pregnant. With no support from her own parents, Holiday's mother arranged for the young Holiday to stay with her older married half sister, Eva Miller, who lived in Baltimore.

Billie Holiday at two years old, in 1917
Billie Holiday had a difficult childhood, her mother often took what were then known as "transportation jobs", serving on the passenger railroads. Holiday was left to be raised largely by Eva Miller's mother-in-law, Martha Miller, and suffered from her mother's absences and leaving her in others' care for much of the first ten years of her life. (Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, first published in 1956, was sketchy about details of her early life, but much was confirmed by Stuart Nicholson in his 1995 biography of the singer.
Some historians have disputed Holiday's paternity, as a copy of her birth certificate in the Baltimore archives lists the father as "Frank DeViese". Other historians consider this an anomaly, probably inserted by a hospital or government worker. Frank DeViese lived in Philadelphia and Sadie Harris may have known him through her work.

Sadie Harris, then known as Sadie Fagan, married Philip Gough, but the marriage was over in two years. Holiday was left with Martha Miller again while her mother took further transportation jobs. Holiday frequently skipped school and her truancy resulted in her being brought before the juvenile court on January 5, 1925 when she was not yet 10. She was sent to The House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school. She was baptized there on March 19, 1925 and after nine months in care, was "paroled" on October 3, 1925 to her mother, who had opened a restaurant called the East Side Grill, where she and Holiday worked long hours. By the age of 11, the girl had dropped out of school.

Holiday's mother returned to their home on December 24, 1926, to discover a neighbor, Wilbur Rich, raping Holiday. Rich was arrested. Officials placed the girl at the House of the Good Shepherd in protective custody as a state witness in the rape case. Holiday was released in February 1927, nearly 12. Holiday and her mother wound up living with and working for a madam. During this time, Holiday first heard the records of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. By the end of 1928, Holiday's mother decided to try her luck in Harlem, New York and left Holiday again with Martha Miller.

During her final period of separation from her mother, Holiday began to perform the songs she learned while working in the brothel. By early 1929, Holiday joined her mother in Harlem. Their landlady was a sharply dressed woman named Florence Williams, who ran a whorehouse at 151 West 140th Street. In order to live, Holiday's mother became a prostitute and, within a matter of days of arriving in New York, Holiday, who had not yet turned fourteen, also became a prostitute for $5 a time. On May 2, 1929, the house was raided, and Holiday and her mother were sent to prison. After spending some time in a workhouse, her mother was released in July, followed by Holiday in October, at the age of 14.

Holiday took her professional pseudonym from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and the musician Clarence Holiday, her probable father. At the outset of her career, she spelled her last name Halliday, the birth-surname of her father, but eventually changed it to Holiday, his performing name. The young singer teamed up with a neighbor, tenor sax player Kenneth Hollan. From 1929 to 1931, they were a team, performing at clubs such as the Grey Dawn, Pod's and Jerry's, and the Brooklyn Elks' Club. Benny Goodman recalled hearing Holiday in 1931 at The Bright Spot. As her reputation grew, Holiday played at many clubs, including Mexico's and The Alhambra Bar and Grill where Charles Linton, a vocalist who later worked with Chick Webb, first met her. It was also during this period that she connected with her father, who was playing with Fletcher Henderson's band.
By the end of 1932 at the age of 17, Billie Holiday replaced the singer Monette Moore at a club called Covan's on West 132nd Street. The producer John Hammond, who loved Monette Moore's singing and had come to hear her, first heard Holiday in early 1933. Hammond arranged for Holiday to make her recording debut, at age 18, in November 1933 with Benny Goodman, singing two songs: "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" and "Riffin' the Scotch", the latter being her first major hit. "Son-in-Law" sold 300 copies, but "Riffin' the Scotch," released on November 11, sold 5,000 copies.

Holiday returned to the studio in 1935 with Goodman and a group led by pianist Teddy Wilson. Their first collaboration included "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," and "Miss Brown To You." The record label did not favor the recording session, because producers wanted Holiday to sound more like Cleo Brown, an established jazz singer. After "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" garnered success, however, the company began considering Holiday an artist in her own right. She began recording under her own name a year later (on the 35 cent Vocalion label), producing a series of extraordinary performances with groups comprising the swing era's finest musicians. In 1935, Billie Holiday had a small role as a woman being abused by her lover in Duke Ellington's short Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life. In her scene, she sang the song "Saddest Tale.

Holiday was signed to Brunswick Records by John Hammond to record current pop tunes with Teddy Wilson in the new "swing" style for the growing jukebox trade. They were given free rein to improvise the material. Holiday's improvisation of the melody line to fit the emotion was revolutionary. With their arrangements, Wilson and Holiday took pedestrian pop tunes, such as "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" (#6 Pop) or "Yankee Doodle Never Went To Town", and turned them into jazz classics. Most of Holiday's recordings with Wilson or under her own name during the 1930s and early 1940s are regarded as important parts of the jazz vocal library. She was then in her early to late 20s.

Another frequent accompanist was the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who had been a boarder at her mother's house in 1934 and with whom Holiday had a special rapport. He said,
"Well, I think you can hear that on some of the old records, you know. Some time I'd sit down and listen to 'em myself, and it sound like two of the same voices, if you don't be careful, you know, or the same mind, or something like that.
Young nicknamed her "Lady Day", and she, in turn, dubbed him "Prez". She did a three-month residency at Clark Monroe's Uptown House in New York in 1937. In the late 1930s, Holiday had brief stints as a big band vocalist with Count Basie (1937) and Artie Shaw (1938). The latter association placed her among the first black women to work with a white orchestra, an unusual arrangement for the times.

By the late 1930s, Billie Holiday had toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, scored a string of radio and retail hits with Teddy Wilson, and became an established artist in the recording industry. Her songs "What A Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Easy Living" were being imitated by singers across America and were quickly becoming jazz standards. In 1938, Holiday's single "I'm Gonna Lock My Heart" ranked 6th as the most-played song for September of that year. Her record label Vocalion listed the single as its fourth best seller for the same month. "I'm Gonna Lock My Heart" peaked at number 2 on the pop charts according to Joel Whitburn's "Pop Memories: 1890-1954" book.

Holiday was recording for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to "Strange Fruit", a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym "Lewis Allan" for the poem, which was set to music and performed at teachers' union meetings. It was eventually heard by Barney Josephson, proprietor of Café Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday.

She performed it at the club in 1939, with some trepidation, fearing possible retaliation. Holiday later said that the imagery in "Strange Fruit" reminded her of her father's death and that this played a role in her resistance to performing it.
When Holiday's producers at Columbia found the subject matter too sensitive, Milt Gabler agreed to record it for his Commodore Records. That was done on April 20, 1939, and "Strange Fruit" remained in her repertoire for twenty years. She later recorded it again for Verve. While the Commodore release did not get any airplay, the controversial song sold well, though Gabler attributed that mostly to the record's other side, "Fine and Mellow", which was a jukebox hit. "The version I did for Commodore," Holiday said of "Strange Fruit", "became my biggest selling record. Strange Fruit" was the equivalent of a top twenty hit in the 1930s.

For her performance of "Strange Fruit" at the Café Society, she had waiters silence the crowd when the song began. During the song's long introduction, the lights dimmed and all movement had to cease. As Holiday began singing, only a small spotlight of light illuminated her face. On the final note, all lights in the club went out and when they came back on, Holiday was gone.
Holiday said her father Clarence Holiday was denied treatment for a fatal lung disorder because of prejudice and that singing "Strange Fruit" reminded her of the incident. "It reminds me of how pop died, but I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it, but because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the south," she said in her autobiography.
Holiday's popularity increased after recording "Strange Fruit". She received a mention in Time magazine. "I open Café Society as an unknown," Holiday said. "I left two years later as a star. I needed the prestige and publicity all right, but you can't pay rent with it." Holiday demanded her manager Joe Glaser give her a raise shortly after.

Holiday soon returned Commodore in 1944, recording songs she made with Teddy Wilson in the 1930s like "I Cover The Waterfront", "I'll Get By", and "He's Funny That Way". She also recorded new songs that were popular at the time, including, "My Old Flame", "How Am I To Know?", "I'm Yours", and "I'll Be Seeing You", a Bing Crosby number one hit. She also recorded her version of "Embraceable You", which would later be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005.
During her time at Commodore, Billie Holiday also babysat the young Billy Crystal; his father being Jack Crystal and uncle being Milt Gabler, the co-founders of Commodore Records.

Holiday's mother Sadie Fagan, nicknamed "The Duchess," started her own restaurant called Mom Holiday's. Fagan used the money her daughter earned while shooting dice with members of the Count Basie band, whom she was on tour with in the late 1930s. "It kept mom busy and happy and stopped her from worrying and watching over me," Holiday said. Soon, Fagan began borrowing large amounts of money from Holiday because the restaurant wasn't turning a profit. Holiday obliged, but soon fell upon hard times herself. "I needed some money one night and I knew Mom was sure to have some," Holiday said. "So I walked in the restaurant like a stockholder and asked. Mom turned me down flat. She wouldn't give me a cent." The two argued and then, Holiday, in a rage, hollered "God bless the child that's got his own," and stormed out of the restaurant. With help from Arthur Herzog, Jr., a pianist, the two wrote a song based on the line "God Bless the Child" and added music.

"God Bless the Child" became Holiday's most popular and covered record. It reached number 25 on the record charts in 1941 and ranked third in Billboard's top songs of the year, selling over a million records. In 1976, the song was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame. Herzog later claimed that Holiday contributed little to the lyrics of her music, adding only a few lines. He also stated that Holiday came up with the line "God Bless the Child" from a dinner conversation the two had.
On June 24, 1942, Holiday recorded "Trav'lin Light" with Paul Whiteman. Because she was still under contract with Columbia records, she couldn't release the song under her own name and instead used the pseudonym "Lady Day." The song was a minor success on the pop charts, reaching number 23, but hit number one on the R&B charts, which were called the Harlem Hit Parade at the time.
In September 1943, Life magazine complimented Holiday on her work. They wrote, "she has the most distinct style of any popular vocalist and is imitated by other vocalists."

Milt Gabler eventually became an A&R man for Decca Records, in addition to owning Commodore Records, and he signed Holiday to the label on August 7, 1944, when Holiday was 29. Her first recording for Decca was "Lover Man" (#16 Pop, #5 R&B), one of her biggest hits. The success and wide distribution of the song made Holiday a staple in the pop community, allowing her to have her own solo concerts, a rarity for jazz singers in the late 40s. Gabler commented on the song's success, saying, "I made Billie a real pop singer. That was right in her. Billie loved those songs." Jimmy Davis and Roger "Ram" Ramirez, "Lover Man"'s songwriters, tried to get Holiday interested in recording the song in 1941, but she didn't take interest. In 1943, a flamboyant male torch singer by the name of Willie Dukes began singing "Lover Man" on 52nd Street. Because of Duke's success with the song, Holiday decided to add it to her live shows. The song's B-side is "No More", a song Holiday considered one of her favorites.

When it came time to record the song, Holiday begged Gabler for strings, which were associated with big name acts like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, to accompany her in the background. "I went on my knees to him," Holiday said. "I didn't want to do it with the ordinary six pieces. I begged Milt and told him I had to have strings behind me." On October 4, 1944, Holiday walked into the recording studio to record "Lover Man" and saw the string ensemble and walked out. The musical director for the session, Toots Camarata said she was overwhelmed with joy. Another reason for Holiday wanting to use strings may have been to dodge the comparisons made between her commercially successful early work with Teddy Wilson and everything produced afterward. Her 1930s sides with Wilson used a small jazz combo. Her recordings with Decca often involved string ensembles and presented her voice in a new light.
A month later, in November, Billie Holiday returned to the Decca studio to record three songs, "That Ole Devil Called Love", "Big Stuff", and "Don't Explain". Holiday wrote "Don't Explain" after she caught her husband, Jimmy Monroe, with lipstick on his collar.

After the recording session, Holiday did not return to the studio until August 1945. She recorded "Don't Explain", "Big Stuff", "What Is This Thing Called Love?", and "You Better Go Now". Ella Fitzgerald declared "You Better Go Now" as her favorite Billie Holiday recording. "Big Stuff" and "Don't Explain" were recorded again but with additional strings and a viola.
Billie Holiday and her dog Mister, NYC, ca. June 1946
In 1946, Holiday recorded one of her most covered and critically acclaimed songs, "Good Morning Heartache". Although the song failed to chart, it remained a staple in her live shows with three known live recordings of the song.
In September 1946, Holiday began work on what would be her only major film New Orleans. She starred opposite Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman. Plagued by racism and McCarthyism, producer Jules Levey and script writer Herbert Biberman were pressured to lessen Holiday and Armstrong's role in the film as to not give the impression that black people created jazz. Their attempts failed because in 1947 Biberman was listed as one of the Hollywood Ten and sent to jail.

Holiday was not pleased that her role was reduced to that of a maid: "I thought I was going to play myself in it," she said. "I thought I was going to be Billie Holiday doing a couple of songs in a nightclub setting and that would be that. I should have known better. When I saw the script, I did."[citation needed] Before filming, Holiday was assigned a dramatic coach who coached her on how to properly say "Miss Marylee", the lead character's name. "So this coach was trying to get the right kind of tom feeling into this thing,"

Holiday said. At one point, after feeling cornered and unable to walk off the set, she burst out into tears. Louis Armstrong tried comforting her. "Better look out," he said. "I know Lady, and when she starts crying, the next thing she's going to do is start fighting. Several scenes were deleted from the film. "They had taken miles of footage of music and scenes," Holiday said, "[and] none of it was left in the picture. And very damn little of me. I know I wore a white dress for a number I did... and that was cut out of the picture." She recorded the track "The Blues Are Brewin'", for the film's soundtrack. Other songs included in the movie are "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" and "Farewell to Storyville".

Holiday's drug addictions were a growing problem on the set. She earned more than a thousand dollars a week from her club ventures at the time, but spent most of it on heroin. Her lover Joe Guy traveled to Hollywood while Holiday was filming and supplied her with drugs. When discovered by Joe Glaser, Holiday's manager, Guy was banned from the set.

By the late 1940s, Holiday had begun recording a number of slow, sentimental ballads. The magazine Metronome expressed its concerns in 1946 about "Good Morning Heartache," saying "there's a danger that Billie's present formula will wear thin, but up to now it's wearing well." The New York Herald Tribune reported on a Holiday concert in 1946 that her performance had little variation in the melody of her songs, with no change in tempo.
On May 16, 1947, Holiday was arrested for the possession of narcotics in her New York apartment. On May 27, 1947, she was in court. "It was called 'The United States of America versus Billie Holiday'. And that's just the way it felt," Holiday recalled. During the trial, Holiday received notice that her lawyer was not interested in coming down to the trial and representing her.

In plain English that meant no one in the world was interested in looking out for me," Holiday said. Dehydrated and unable to hold down any food, she pled guilty and asked to be sent to the hospital. The D.A. spoke up in her defense, saying, "If your honor please, this is a case of a drug addict, but more serious, however, than most of our cases, Miss Holiday is a professional entertainer and among the higher rank as far as income was concerned." By 1947, Holiday was at her commercial peak, having made a quarter of a million dollars in the three years prior. Holiday placed second in the Down Beat poll for 1946 and 1947, her highest ranking in the poll. In Billboard's July 6 issue on 1947, Holiday ranked 5 on its annual college poll of "girl singers". Jo Stafford topped the poll. In 1946, Holiday won the Metronome Magazine popularity poll.
At the end of the trial, Holiday was sentenced to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, more popularly known as "Camp Cupcake". Other notable celebrities to serve time at Alderson are Martha Stewart, Sara Jane Moore (who tried to assassinate President Ford), and Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme of the Charles Manson family of murderers.

Luckily for Holiday, she was released early (March 16, 1948) because of good behavior. When she arrived at Newark, her pianist Bobby Tucker and her dog Mister were waiting for her. The dog leaped at Holiday, knocking off her hat, and tackled her to the ground. "He began lapping me and loving me like crazy," she said. A woman overheard the commotion and thought the dog was attacking Holiday. She started screaming and soon a crowd gathered and then the press showed up. "I might just as well have wheeled into Penn Station and had a quiet little get-together with the Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service," Holiday said.
Ed Fishman (who fought with Joe Glaser to be Holiday's manager) thought of the idea to throw a comeback concert at Carnegie Hall. Holiday hesitated, unsure whether audiences were ready to accept her after the arrest. She eventually gave in, and agreed to the concert.
On March 27, 1948, Holiday played Carnegie Hall to a sold-out crowd. There were 2,700 tickets sold in advance, a record at the time for the venue. Her popularity at the time was unusual in that she didn't have a current hit record. Holiday's last song to chart was "Lover Man" in 1945, which would be her final placement on the record charts during her lifetime. Holiday did 32 songs at the Carnegie concert by her count, some of which included Cole Porter's "Night and Day" and her 30s hit "Strange Fruit".

During the show, someone sent Holiday a box of gardenias. "My old trademark," Holiday said. "I took them out of box and fastened them smack to the side of my head without even looking twice." There was a hatpin in the gardenias and Holiday, unknowingly, stuck the needle deep into the side of her head. "I didn't feel anything until the blood started rushing down in my eyes and ears," she said. After the third curtain call, Holiday passed out.
On April 27, 1948, Bob Sylvester and her promoter Al Wilde arranged for Billie Holiday to do a Broadway show. Titled Holiday on Broadway, it sold out and was a success for a while. "The regular music critics and drama critics came and treated us like we were legit," Holiday said. Despite the success, the show closed after three weeks.

Holiday was arrested again on January 22, 1949, inside her room at San Francisco's Hotel Mark Twain.
By the 1950s, Holiday's drug abuse, drinking, and relationships with abusive men caused her health to deteriorate. She appeared on the ABC reality series The Comeback Story to discuss attempts to overcome her misfortunes. Her later recordings showed the effects of declining health on her voice, as it grew coarse and no longer projected its former vibrancy.
On March 28, 1957, Holiday married Louis McKay, a Mafia enforcer, who like most of the men in her life was abusive,[71] but he did try to get her off drugs. They were separated at the time of her death, but McKay had plans to start a chain of Billie Holiday vocal studios, à la Arthur Murray dance schools.
Holiday's late recordings on Verve constitute about a third of her commercial recorded legacy and are as popular as her earlier work for the Columbia, Commodore and Decca labels. In later years, her voice became more fragile, but it never lost the edge that had always made it so distinctive.
Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, was ghostwritten by William Dufty and published in 1956. Dufty, a New York Post writer and editor then married to Holiday's close friend Maely Dufty, wrote the book quickly from a series of conversations with the singer in the Duftys' 93rd Street apartment. He drew on the work of earlier interviewers as well and intended to let Holiday tell her story in her own way.

To accompany her autobiography, Holiday released an LP in June 1956 titled Lady Sings the Blues. The album did not have any new material other than the title track, "Too Marvelous For Words", "Willow Weep for Me", and "I Thought About You", but had new recordings of Holiday's biggest hits. These included "Trav'lin' Light" "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child". On December 22, 1956, Billboard magazine reviewed Lady Sings the Blues, calling it a worthy musical complement to her autobiography. "Holiday is in good voice now," said the reviewer, "and these new readings will be much appreciated by her following." "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child" were called classics, and "Good Morning Heartache", another reissued track in the LP, was also noted positively.
On November 10, 1956, Holiday performed two concerts before packed audiences at Carnegie Hall, a major accomplishment for any artist, especially a black artist of the segregated period of American history. Live recordings of the second Carnegie Hall concert were released on a Verve/HMV album in the UK in late 1961 called The Essential Billie Holiday. The thirteen tracks included on this album featured her own songs, "I Love My Man", "Don't Explain" and "Fine And Mellow", together with other songs closely associated with her, including "Body and Soul", "My Man", and "Lady Sings the Blues" (her lyrics accompanied a tune by pianist Herbie Nichols).

The liner notes on this album were written partly by Gilbert Millstein of The New York Times, who, according to these notes, served as narrator in the Carnegie Hall concerts. Interspersed among Holiday's songs, Millstein read aloud four lengthy passages from her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues. He later wrote:
The narration began with the ironic account of her birth in Baltimore – 'Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three' – and ended, very nearly shyly, with her hope for love and a long life with 'my man' at her side.
Millstein continued:
It was evident, even then, that Miss Holiday was ill. I had known her casually over the years and I was shocked at her physical weakness. Her rehearsal had been desultory; her voice sounded tinny and trailed off; her body sagged tiredly. But I will not forget the metamorphosis that night. The lights went down, the musicians began to play and the narration began. Miss Holiday stepped from between the curtains, into the white spotlight awaiting her, wearing a white evening gown and white gardenias in her black hair. She was erect and beautiful; poised and smiling. And when the first section of narration was ended, she sang – with strength undiminished – with all of the art that was hers. I was very much moved. In the darkness, my face burned and my eyes. I recall only one thing. I smiled."
The critic Nat Hentoff of Down Beat magazine, who attended the Carnegie Hall concert, wrote the remainder of the sleeve notes on the 1961 album. He wrote of Holiday's performance:
Throughout the night, Billie was in superior form to what had sometimes been the case in the last years of her life. Not only was there assurance of phrasing and intonation; but there was also an outgoing warmth, a palpable eagerness to reach and touch the audience. And there was mocking wit. A smile was often lightly evident on her lips and her eyes as if, for once, she could accept the fact that there were people who did dig her.

Hentoff continued:
The beat flowed in her uniquely sinuous, supple way of moving the story along; the words became her own experiences; and coursing through it all was Lady's sound – a texture simultaneously steel-edged and yet soft inside; a voice that was almost unbearably wise in disillusion and yet still childlike, again at the centre. The audience was hers from before she sang, greeting her and saying good-bye with heavy, loving applause. And at one time, the musicians too applauded. It was a night when Billie was on top, undeniably the best and most honest jazz singer alive.
Her performance of "Fine and Mellow" on CBS's The Sound of Jazz program is memorable for her interplay with her long-time friend Lester Young. Both were less than two years from death.
Holiday first toured Europe in 1954 as part of a Leonard Feather package that also included Buddy DeFranco and Red Norvo. When she returned almost five years later, she made one of her last television appearances for Granada's Chelsea at Nine in London. Her final studio recordings were made for MGM in 1959, with lush backing from Ray Ellis and his Orchestra, who had also accompanied her on Columbia's Lady in Satin album the previous year—see below. The MGM sessions were released posthumously on a self-titled album, later re-titled and re-released as Last Recordings.
Although childless, Billie Holiday had two godchildren: singer Billie Lorraine Feather, daughter of Leonard Feather, and Bevan Dufty, son of William Dufty.
Billie Holiday in court in late 1949. She was brought to court over a contract dispute.
Holiday stated that she began using hard drugs in the early 1940s. She married trombonist Jimmy Monroe on August 25, 1941. While still married to Monroe, she became romantically involved with trumpeter Joe Guy, who was also her drug dealer, and eventually became his common-law wife. She finally divorced Monroe in 1947 and also split with Guy.

In October 1949, Holiday recorded "Crazy He Calls Me", which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010. Gabler said the song was a hit, likely making it her most successful recording for Decca after "Lover Man". The record charts of the 1940s did not list songs outside the top 30, making it impossible to recognize minor pop hits. Also, by the late 1940s, despite her popularity and concert drawing power, Holiday's singles received little radio airplay. This may have been because of the bad reputation she had up to that point.
Because of her 1947 conviction, Holiday's New York City Cabaret Card was revoked, which kept her from working anywhere that sold alcohol for the remaining 12 years of her life.
The Cabaret system started in 1940 and was designed to prevent people of "bad character" from working on licensed premises. A performer had to renew his or her license every two years.

This system lasted until 1967. Clubs that sold alcohol in New York were among the highest paying venues in the country. Club owners knew blacklisted performers had limited work options, so they would offer them a smaller salary. This greatly reduced Holiday's earning power. She hadn't been receiving proper royalties for her work until she signed with Decca, so her main source of revenue were her club concerts. The problem worsened when Holiday's records went out of print in the 1950s. She seldom received any money from royalties in her latter years. For instance, in 1958 Holiday received a royalty check of only 11 dollars. Also, Holiday's lawyer during the late 1950s, Earle Warren Zaidins, failed to register with BMI on all but two songs she had written or co-written, costing her potential revenue.
In 1948, Holiday played at the Ebony Club, which, because she lost her cabaret card, was against the law. Her manager at the time, John Levy, was convinced he could get her card back and allowed her to open without one. "I opened scared," Holiday said,  expecting the cops to come in any chorus and carry me off. But nothing happened. I was a huge success."

Also in 1948, Holiday recorded Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy". The single was heard by up and coming act Nina Simone. Simone covered the tune 1958, and it ended up becoming her sole top 40 hit in America.
In 1950, Holiday appeared in the Universal-International short film 'Sugar Chile' Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet, where she sang "God Bless the Child" and "Now, Baby or Never".
On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. Police officers were stationed at the door to her room. She was arrested for drug possession as she lay dying, and her hospital room was raided by authorities. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person. Her funeral mass was held at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in New York City.
Gilbert Millstein of The New York Times, who had been the narrator at Billie Holiday's 1956 Carnegie Hall concerts and had partly written the sleeve notes for the album The Essential Billie Holiday (see above), described her death in these same 1961-dated sleeve notes:

Billie Holiday died in the Metropolitan Hospital, New York, on Friday, July 17, 1959, in the bed in which she had been arrested for illegal possession of narcotics a little more than a month before, as she lay mortally ill; in the room from which a police guard had been removed – by court order – only a few hours before her death, which, like her life, was disorderly and pitiful. She had been strikingly beautiful, but she was wasted physically to a small, grotesque caricature of herself. The worms of every kind of excess – drugs were only one – had eaten her ... The likelihood exists that among the last thoughts of this cynical, sentimental, profane, generous and greatly talented woman of 44 was the belief that she was to be arraigned the following morning. She would have been, eventually, although possibly not that quickly. In any case, she removed herself finally from the jurisdiction of any court here below.



Eleanora Fagan Gough (Filadelfia, 7 de abril de 1915 - Nueva York, 17 de julio de 1959), conocida como Billie Holiday y apodada Lady Day, fue una cantante estadounidense de jazz. Junto con Sarah Vaughan y Ella Fitzgerald, está considerada entre las más importantes e influyentes voces femeninas del jazz.
El tema “Strange Fruit” fue considerado como la mejor canción del Siglo XX, por la revista “Time” en 1999.

El valor artístico de Billie Holiday reside en su capacidad interpretativa, en su dominio del swing y en la adaptación de sus cualidades vocales al contenido de la canción. Billie Holiday transmite a sus canciones una intensidad inigualable que, en muchos casos, es fruto de una traslación de sus vivencias personales a las letras cantadas. Esta personalización de lo cantado hace que su estilo esté muy vinculado a intérpretes clásicos de blues como Bessie Smith o Ma Rainey; también está clara su deuda, confirmada por ella misma, con Louis Armstrong (en su autobiografía dejó escrito: "Siempre quise el gran sonido de Bessie y el sentimiento de Pops") y, desde luego, con quien sería su principal acompañante: el saxofonista tenor y clarinetista Lester Young.

Los primeros años de Billie Holiday fueron difíciles; las consecuencias de las vivencias de sus primeros años se proyectaron como una carga negativa sobre toda su vida.
Nació en Filadelfia pero creció en Fells Point, un barrio de Baltimore. Su madre, Sadie Fagan, tenía sólo trece años cuando nació Billie; su padre Clarence Holiday, un guitarrista y bajista de jazz que tocó en la orquesta de Fletcher Henderson, tenía quince. Los padres de Billie nunca se casaron y él las abandonó cuando ella era todavía un bebé. Su madre, excesivamente joven para la responsabilidad, abandonaba con frecuencia a la niña con parientes de no muy buena reputación. Billie fue enviada a una escuela católica a la edad de diez años, después de haber admitido ser violada. Aunque debería haber estado en la escuela hasta convertirse en adulta, un amigo de la familia la ayudó a escaparse dos años después. En 1927, madre e hija se marcharon primero a Nueva Jersey y después a Brooklyn. En Nueva York, además de ayudar a su madre en trabajos de ayuda doméstica, Billie empezó a ejercer la prostitución.

Hay controversia en referencia a la paternidad de Holiday. Esta controversia está generada por la copia de su certificado de nacimiento en los archivos de Baltimore, que muestran como padre a "Frank DeViese". Algunos historiadores consideran esto una anomalía, insertada probablemente por el hospital o trabajadores del gobierno (ver Donald Clarke Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon , ISBN0306811367). Clarence Holiday aceptó su paternidad pero fue a duras penas un padre responsable. Rara vez Billie lo veía, y si lo hacía, ella le pedía dinero amenazándolo con contarle a la novia de su padre que ella era su hija.
Hacia 1930-1931, Billie Holiday cantaba ya frecuentemente en varios clubes de Nueva York. Su popularidad empezó a cimentarse en 1933 cuando el productor John Hammond habló de ella públicamente en su columna de prensa y llevó a Benny Goodman a una de sus actuaciones. Después de la grabación de una prueba en los estudios de la Columbia, Billie se unió a un pequeño grupo de músicos dirigidos por Benny Goodman para hacer su debut comercial el 27 de noviembre de 1933 con la canción "Your Mother's Son-In-Law".
Holiday fue aficionada a las drogas psicoactivas (aunque nunca se ha sabido con seguridad), usándolas durante casi toda su vida. Fumaba marihuana desde los doce o trece años de edad. Sin embargo fue la heroína la que la destruyó. No está claro quién fue el que introdujo a Holiday en las drogas, pero historiadores y fuentes contemporáneas coinciden en que comenzó su uso abusivo de intravenosas alrededor de 1940.

Los éxitos de Holiday fueron estropeados por la creciente dependencia a las drogas y el alcohol así como las relaciones abusivas. Esto afectó a su voz como también sus posteriores grabaciones: su espíritu joven fue reemplazado por un matiz de remordimiento pero a pesar de todo, su impacto en otros artistas es indudable. Incluso después de su muerte influyó en cantantes tales como Janis Joplin y Nina Simone. En 1972, Diana Ross actuó para la película “Lady Sings the Blues”, basada en la obra autobiográfica de Holiday. Todo el mundo quedó sorprendido, la película fue un éxito comercial y ganó la nominación de mejor actriz para Ross. En 1987, U2 lanzó “Angel of Harlem”, en tributo a ella.
Billie Holiday declarando ante un tribunal en la ciudad de Los Ángeles (California, EE.UU.) en 1949.
Su vida personal fue tan turbulenta como las canciones que cantaba. Se casó con el trompetista Jimmy Monroe el 25 de agosto de 1941. Mientras aún estaba casada con Monroe, tuvo una relación con el trompetista Joe Guy. Finalmente, se divorció de Monroe en 1947 mientras también se separaba de Guy. El 28 de marzo de 1952, Billie se casó con Louis Mckay, un “Justiciero” de la mafia. Mckay, como muchos de los hombres de su vida, era violento pero trató de sacarla de las drogas. Ya estaban separados en el momento de su muerte.

Holiday declaró abiertamente su bisexualidad y se dieron rumores de su aventura con la actriz Tallulah Bankhead. Bankhead desmintió los rumores.
Sus últimas grabaciones en Verve son recordadas como las grabaciones Commodore y Decca de veinte años atrás. Varias de sus canciones como “God Bless the Child”, “I love you porgy” o “Fine and mellow” se han convertido en clásicos del jazz. La presentación de este tema, “Fine and mellow”, en el programa de la CBS The sound of the Jazz, fue memorable por la interpretación con su querido amigo Lester Young; ambos estaban a menos de dos años de su muerte.
Cuando presentó una canción en contra de los linchamientos, “Strange Fruit” (Abel Meeropol), con textos como “southern trees bear strange fruit” (los árboles sureños dan extrañas frutas) le dio un puesto destacado no sólo en la historia de la música sino también en la de Estados Unidos.2
Fue arrestada por posesión de heroína y estuvo ocho meses en prisión. Su tarjeta para trabajar en los clubs de Nueva York (la New York city cabaret card) fue revocada, lo que imposibilitó que trabajara en clubes durante los últimos doce años de su vida. Posteriormente fue víctima de una estafa sobre sus ganancias y murió con tan solo $0.70 en el banco y $750 en efectivo. Al final de mayo de 1959 fue hospitalizada por dolor en el hígado y problemas de corazón. Fue condenada a arresto domiciliario el 12 de julio por posesión de narcóticos; en 1959, la adicción a los narcóticos era considerada un crimen. Billie Holiday permaneció bajo la custodia policial hasta su muerte por cirrosis hepática el 17 de julio de 1959 a la edad de 44 años. Billie Holiday fue enterrada en el cementerio Saint Raymond en el Bronx de Nueva York