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Billie Holiday Biography
BILLIE HOLIDAY BIOGRAPHY
Next time you hear the words 'jazz' and 'diva' mentioned in the same breath as Katie Melua or Amy Winehouse, it would be wise to laugh, try not to spill your beverage on your coffee table and think back instead to the genuine article. Billie Holiday took the phrase 'suffering for your art' to new levels. Her private life was full of abusive relationships, drug addictions and periods of prostitution - experiences which undoubtedly coloured her heartbreakingly sensitive vocal performances. Fifty years after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most revered vocalists of the 20th century.
Billie Holiday was born in Baltimore in 1915. To say she endured a hard childhood would be severely understating the case. Her musician father, Clarence Holiday, left the family while Billie was still a child. (In later years Holiday would always avoid using him on her own sessions). Holiday's mother, Sadie, was still a teenager at the time and found it hard to cope with a child, often leaving Billie with uncaring relatives who it is said, often abused her. Billie was raped when she was 11 years of age and was put into a Catholic reform school. Although she was sentenced to stay there until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after two years. Billie eventually moved to New York with her mother in 1929. To survive Billie worked as a maid and then as a teenage prostitute, aged just 15. She soon began singing in bars and restaurants and her big break came in 1933 when she was spotted by record producer John Hammond. He wrote up a review in a column and brought band leader Benny Goodman to one of her performances. Holiday joined a small group led by Goodman to make her record debut on November 27, 1933 with Your Mother's Son-In-Law.
By early 1935 Billie made her debut at the Apollo Theatre and appeared in a short film with Duke Ellington. Then, almost a year since entering the studio with Benny Goodman, Billie returned, this time with a band headed by jazz pianist Teddy Wilson. But Billie was given a bunch of second rate songs (during the swing era, music publishers kept the best songs for society orchestras and popular white singers of the day). Despite the run-of-the-mill tunes, Holiday breathed new life into the songs, using vocal pauses and slurs which made the songs intensely personal. Holiday would pour her heart and soul into every song and it was her unique ability to interpret a lyric that made her stand out. Her accompanist Mal Waldron observed: "She had a way with words." Wilson and Holiday's styles perfectly complemented each other. (It was Wilson who came up with Billie's nickname 'Lady Day') and despite the poor songs, there was a stellar cast surrounding the singer, including trumpeter Roy Eldridge and saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster. Together they energised flat songs like What A Little Moonlight Can Do, Twenty-Four Hours A Day and er, Eeny, Meeny, Miney Mo turning them into popular jukebox hits.
Holiday continued to tour with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson and then returned to the studio in 1937 to record with upcoming band leader, Count Basie. The sessions led to a tour with Basie's band although the pairing lasted less than a year. Billie was fired from the band for being temperamental and unreliable. But just a month after leaving Basie's band, Billie was hired by Artie Shaw's band in 1938. It was the first time a black female singer had appeared with a white big band. And despite the success of the music, show promoters and radio sponsors began objecting to Billie%u2019s presence in the band, (hiding their race issues by complaining of her unorthodox singing style.) Holiday quit the band in disgust and soon took up residency at a hip New York club, Cafe Society - the first New York nightclub with a mixed race audience. It was here that Billie would introduce one of her best known songs, the eerie, haunting, anti-lynching song, Strange Fruit. The song, written by cafe society regular Lewis Allen, would become forever tied to Billie. Even with its uncomfortable subject matter and the intense racism that prevailed in the deep South, the song became the highlight of Billie's performances. Many of Holiday's recordings from this period had a sombre ring and in 1941 she had another hit with the brooding, God Bless The child, Gloomy Sunday and I Cover The Waterfront.
Billie signed to Decca Records in 1944 and had another big hit with Lover Man, a song written especially for her. Holiday soon became Decca's most important artist, earning the right to top-quality songs and lavish string sections for her sessions. Billie followed the label's pop orientated policy, working with the lavish string arrangements of conductor Gordon Jenkins, (who would later work with Frank Sinatra), Billie enjoyed several further hits including T'ain't Nobody's Business If I Do, Porgy, and Crazy He Calls Me.
Although artistically, Billie was now at her peak, her personal life was still turbulent. Billie fell in love with men who stole money from her, abused her and introduced her to heroin. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, Billie had begun smoking opium early on with her first husband, Johnnie Munroe. After that marriage collapsed, husband No.2, trumpeter Joe Guy, introduced her to heroin and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of the drug and sentenced to eight months in prison.
Upon her release, Billie found it hard to get a cabaret card, so live nightclub work was out. She was soon back taking heroin and plagued by underworld celebrity hangers on. By now, even though the ravages of alcohol and drugs had affected her voice, she began recording for jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz who set up legendary jazz label Verve Records. By now her voice was croaky, she missed notes but she hadn't lost her ability to interpret a song. Billie teamed up again with Ben Webster as well as other premier jazz musicians including Oscar Peterson and Harry 'Sweets' Edison. Although dividing fans, many of her mid-50s Verve Recordings are just as intense as her classic work. Among the highlights were a 1954 concert with Count Basie (Songs For Torching) and the 1958 album, Songs For Distingue Lovers.
Billie's 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings The Blues brought her even more fame (or notoriety). (The book was made into a film starring Diana Ross in 1972.) In 1957 Billie released the Lady in Satin LP which featured her increasingly hoarse voice coupled with syrupy string arrangements. Music critic Ron David said it sounded "like her voice had died and come back to haunt us from the grave."
Billie eventually died in May 1959 of liver and heart disease, ravaged by drugs, drink and a lifetime of misery. In an unbearably macabre touch she was actually arrested on charges of drugs possession while on her death bed. Her cult fame spread quickly after her death, giving her more fame than she'd enjoyed when she was alive.
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