Billie Holiday

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Billie Holiday, 1947
Photo: William Gottlieb
Billie Holiday, Downbeat Club, New York, 1947

Billie Holiday (born April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia as Eleanora Fagan ; † July 17, 1959 in New York City ) is one of the most important American jazz singers along with Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan .

Childhood (1915–1929)

Two year old Billie Holiday in 1917

Billie Holiday was mostly called Eleanora Fagan prior to adopting her stage name, although her birth certificate shows the name Elionora Harris . She was later nicknamed Lady Day by her boyfriend Lester Young .

Much of the information about her childhood is based on her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues , which she dictated to journalist William Dufty from 1956. However, its truthfulness is controversial. The very first sentence suggests her very personal view of the circumstances of her childhood: “Mam and Dad were still children when they married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three. ”In fact, her mother was nineteen when the daughter was born, and she was never married or shared with Billie's presumed biological father.

Her mother Sarah "Sadie" Fagan (née Harris) (1896-1945) claimed Clarence Halliday (1898-1937) alias: Clarence Holiday was Billie's biological father, a jazz guitarist who later played in the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, among others . After Billie's birth, she worked as a waitress on trains for a while, which is why Billie grew up mostly with her half-sister's mother-in-law, Martha Miller, in Baltimore for the first ten years of her life . When Billie was eleven, her mother opened The East Side Grill restaurant , where the girl often had to work long hours. A short time later she dropped out of school.

On December 24, 1926, when Billie was eleven years old, her mother came back from work to discover that her neighbor, Wilbur Rich, was raping the child . Rich was arrested and Billie was sent to The House of the Good Shepherd Catholic reformatory "for her protection" . At twelve, Billie was released from the reform home. Shortly thereafter, her mother started working in a brothel. Billie also worked there as a messenger girl. Here she got to know the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith on the establishment's gramophone . A few months later, the mother and daughter were arrested during a raid. Then the mother moved to Harlem and once again left her daughter with Martha Miller. Billie probably worked as a prostitute in a brothel in Baltimore for some time . During this time she started singing. In early 1929 she followed her mother to New York. The landlady there, Florence Williams, ran a brothel in which the mother and thirteen-year-old daughter worked as prostitutes "for $ 5 per client " . Another raid occurred on May 2, 1929 , and Billie was arrested again and sent to prison. She was not released until October of the same year.

The early singing career (1929–1935)

In 1929, Elinore Harris began performing in clubs under the name she became known by: Billie Holiday. It is composed of the first name of the silent film actress Billie Dove and the last name of her presumed father Clarence Holiday, where she initially spelled her last name Halliday .

From 1929–1931 she performed with her neighbor, tenor saxophonist Kenneth Hollan, in clubs such as Gray Dawn , Pod's and Jerry’s and the Brooklyn Elks' Club .

In early 1933 she was discovered by record producers John Hammond and Bernie Hanighen , who were impressed by their talent for improvisation. In November 1933, recordings with Benny Goodman were organized for the eighteen year old. They recorded the songs Your Mother's Son-In-Law and Riffin 'the Scotch ; The latter was the first hit with a circulation of 5,000 Billie Holidays.

In 1935 she sang Saddest Tale in Duke Ellington's Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life.

Teddy Wilson and Brunswick Records (1935-1938)

In the same year Hammond signed the aspiring artist for Brunswick Records . Here, together with the jazz pianist Teddy Wilson , she recorded well-known pieces in the newly emerging swing style for the increasingly popular jukeboxes . Holiday was able to improvise freely on these recordings and invented that unique, highly idiosyncratic style of playing freely with the melodies that would become her trademark. Her recordings from the first session included What a Little Moonlight Can Do and Miss Brown to You , two tracks that the record company didn't particularly like at first. But when the records were sold successfully, records began to be produced under their own name. Wilson and Holiday recorded many popular songs of the time, making them jazz classics. Stephan Richter writes about this: (...) in truth, it was not the composers who came to life in Holidays songs, but their voice, their personality, which makes every word their own, rewrites every line of text in its own way.

Lester Young was also involved in many of these recordings , with whom she would henceforth have a lifelong friendship. He nicknamed her Lady Day , she called him Prez. Young also suggested that her mother should be nicknamed The Duchess when her daughter is called Lady .

Since the songs were not elaborately arranged, but rather improvised over large parts, these recordings were not expensive for Brunswick. Holiday received a one-off payment for this and received no money from record sales and radio performances, although recordings like I Cried for You sold 15,000 copies and more, which was about five times as much as other Brunswick records.

Count Basie and Artie Shaw (1937-1938)

Next she sang with Count Basie . He quickly got used to the fact that Billie had a strong influence on the melody, because even then she knew exactly what her singing should sound like. Even if she never went to the studio with Basie - there are only the live recordings I Can't Get Started , They Can't Take That Away from Me and Swing It Brother Swing from the time - she took many of his musicians into the studio with her to recordings with Teddy Wilson. The break occurred in February 1938; according to Billie Holiday because of an argument about low pay and requests to change her singing style, according to Basie because of her unreliability.

She then sang with Artie Shaw , who had already organized her first radio broadcast on WABC in March 1936 . Due to the great success of the show, ABC followed up with a special in April. Since Shaw had fewer vocal pieces in the program than Basie, Holiday could sing less with him. In addition, the management put pressure on the band leader to employ the white singer Nita Bradley , with whom she did not get along very well. When she was forced to use the freight elevator and the back exit at the Lincoln Hotel in November 1938 due to complaints from the hotel management, the drink was full and she decided to leave the band. The only surviving recording from this period is Any Old Time.

She was one of the first female jazz singers to perform with white musicians, thus overcoming racist boundaries. Despite this pioneering role, she was still forced to use back entrances. She later reported that she had to wait for their performances in dark, secluded rooms. On stage she transformed into Lady Day with the white gardenia in her hair. She explained the deep emotional impact of her singing with the remark: "I lived these songs" .

Billie Holiday suffered from discrimination as black. Especially when touring with mixed bands like Artie Shaw's in 1938, she and the other black musicians had humiliating experiences every day. She found appearances for which her face was made darker with make-up as particularly humiliating, since the white audience allegedly found Billie Holidays complexion to be too light at times.

Despite all the difficulties, 1938 was a very successful year for the singer; in September her recording I'm Gonna Lock My Heart reached number 6 in the charts.

Mainstream success (1939-1947)

In 1939 she sang the song Strange Fruit for the first time , which is based on the poem of the same name by the Jewish teacher Abel Meeropol (alias Lewis Allan) and emphatically addresses the lynching of blacks. While Columbia producers found the subject "too hot," Commodore Records agreed to include it, and the record became one of their greatest hits. Audiences have since associated Billie Holiday with the piece and have wanted to hear it from her again and again. The performances in the Café Society were meticulously staged; before she sang the piece, she had the audience ask the waiters for silence beforehand. The lights were dimmed during the long intro and a single spot lit Billie Holidays face. With the fading of the last note, the light went out, and then it disappeared into the dark.

Billie Holiday had become a star. Her mother Sadie Fagan now called her restaurant Mom Holiday . At the same time, she gambled away her daughter's money by throwing the dice. When Billie Holiday asked for money from her one evening, her mother gave her the cold shoulder. Allegedly Billie Holiday then left the restaurant cursing and shouted: "God bless the child that's got its own!" which later became the title line of the song God Bless the Child . The song reached number 3 on the billboards of the year and sold over a million copies.

In 1943, Life Magazine wrote of Billie Holiday that she had the most individual style of all popular singers and was thus copied by many.

Before she recorded Lover Man for Decca in 1944 , she begged her producer, Milt Gabler, to include Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra with strings. When she came to the studio on October 4th, she was moved to tears because she was actually expecting a string ensemble there. From then on, her voice was more often accompanied by strings.

Billie Hollyday in Washington 1948 with Al Dunn (drummer), Bobby Tucker (pianist) and Benny Fonsville (bassist).
Billie Holliday at Club Bali in Washington (1948)

Holiday experienced another success when she was celebrated as the first jazz singer in 1944 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The appearance in the film New Orleans (1946) next to her role model Louis Armstrong was disappointing for her and her fans. She was only allowed to play the role Hollywood had intended for blacks at the time, namely the "maid". Billie, who believed she was allowed to play herself, was utterly disappointed. During the filming, she could no longer hide a problem that had been with her since the early 1940s: her heroin addiction . Joe Guy , her husband and dealer, was therefore banned from the set.

Billie Holiday, 1949
Photo: Carl van Vechten
Billie Holiday, 1949
Photo: Carl van Vechten

Carnegie Hall, Drug Possession Trial, 1947-1949

On May 16, 1947, Billie Holiday was arrested for drug possession. In the ensuing trial, she pleaded guilty and asked to be admitted to hospital after her attorney told her he was not interested in representing her in the trial. She received a jail sentence, was sent to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, and was released early on March 16, 1948 for good conduct. Her manager Ed Fishman then wanted to give a concert at Carnegie Hall , but Holiday hesitated, not knowing whether the audience would still stand by her after her arrest. Finally she gave in. The sold out concert on March 27, 1948 was an unprecedented success.

Due to her criminal record, Holiday had lost her cabaret license and was not allowed to perform in licensed venues, which cut her income significantly, especially since she still did not receive a fair share of the licenses (she received a check for $ 11 for license fees in 1958).

On January 22, 1949, she was arrested again for drug possession.

The last years (1950–1959)

Her health began to decline in the 1950s. She continued to have relationships with violent men, and attempts to withdraw were unsuccessful. The drug use also had an effect on her voice: in her later recordings with Verve Records , her youthful élan gave way to a noticeable melancholy .

In 1956 her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues was published. The LP of the same name contained no new recordings except for the title song, but was praised by Billboard Magazine as a "worthy musical addition to their autobiography".

In November of that year she had her last two sold out concerts at Carnegie Hall, which is a great honor for any artist, but especially for a black singer in the late 1950s. 13 recordings from the second concert appeared posthumously in 1961 on the album The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert . Gilbert Milstein of the New York Times wrote in his cover text:

“The sample was incoherent, her voice sounded thin and sluggish, her body bent tiredly. But I will never forget the metamorphosis that evening. The light went out, the musicians began to play and the story began. Miss Holiday stepped out from between the curtains into the spotlight waiting for her, wrapped in a white robe and with a white gardenia in her black hair. Upright and beautiful, confident and smiling. And when she finished the first part of her story, she began to sing - with undiminished strength - with all of her art. I was very moved. My face and eyes burned in the dark. And I remember one thing. I smiled."

death

In early 1959, her doctor diagnosed cirrhosis of the liver and banned Holiday from drinking; However, she was abstinent from alcohol only for a short time . In May she had lost ten kilograms. On May 31, she was admitted to the Metropolitan Hospital, where she died under degrading circumstances; Police officers stood around the hospital bed to arrest her for drug possession.

When she died, she had $ 0.70 in her bank account and a magazine fee of $ 750 in cash.

Holiday was buried in Saint Raymonds Cemetery in the Bronx .

Appreciations

Billie Holiday was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame . The Venus crater Holiday is named after her.

Known relationships

  • Orson Welles (actor / director) 
  • Tallulah Bankhead (actress)  
  • John Levy
  • Jimmy Monroe, husband, married on August 25, 1941, divorced in 1947
  • Joe Guy, husband under common law, separated in 1957 (trumpeter and drug dealer )
  • Louis McKay, common law husband , married March 28, 1957, until her death.

influence

Holiday has had a huge impact on other artists at all stages of their career. After her death she influenced singers like Janis Joplin and Nina Simone .

Her late recordings for Verve record label , including Solitude 1952 and Music for Torching 1955, have survived, as have earlier recordings made from 1933 for Columbia Records , Commodore ( The Complete Commodore Recordings ), and Decca Records . Many of her pieces, including God Bless the Child , George Gershwin's I Loves You Porgy and her repentant Blues Fine and Mellow, have become jazz classics.

Billie Holiday had a distinctive voice. Although she had no musical training and had only a limited vocal range, she was an exceptional singer; at the same time bitter and fragile, both hypothermic and passionate.

“ At Holiday you get caught up in an existential vortex, real exposure to this music turns the brain off like a drug. It is only with great difficulty that you will be able to force yourself to listen to these songs analytically, Holiday's voice alone affects the nerve tracts directly. "

- Stephan Richter

Some of the best-known standards she has shaped with her interpretation are A Fine Romance , All of Me , As Time Goes By , Autumn in New York , But Beautiful , Do You Know What It Means , Embraceable You , Fine and Mellow (Billie Holiday 1939), Gloomy Sunday , God Bless the Child (Billie Holiday 1939), Good Morning Heartache , I Cover the Waterfront , I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues , I Loves You, Porgy , It's Easy to Remember (And So Hard to Forget ) , Yesterdays , Lover, Come Back to Me , Love for Sale , Lover Man , The Man I Love , Mean to Me , Nice Work If You Can Get It , Night and Day , Solitude , Stormy Weather , Summertime , There Is No Greater Love , These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You) , The Way You Look Tonight, and Willow Weep for Me .

Movies

The life of Billie Holiday was filmed in 1971/72 under the title Lady Sings the Blues . The main role played the American soul singer Diana Ross , who was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for this portrayal .

  • Billie Holiday - A Sensation. Biographical documentary, Germany, 2015, 52 min., Script and director: Katja Duregger , production: Tag / Traum, SWR , arte , first broadcast: April 12, 2015 by arte, summary by arte.
  • Otherwise there are only a few documentary recordings of her, including those from the TV show The Sound of Jazz .

Compositions

Holiday has written several songs alone, some in collaboration with other writers.

  • 1936: Billie's Blues aka: I Love My Man
  • 1939: Our Love Is Different
  • 1939: Long Gone Blues
  • 1939: Fine and Mellow
  • 1939: Everything Happens for the Best (with Tab Smith )
  • 1940: Tell Me More and More and Then Some
  • 1941: God Bless the Child (with Arthur Herzog, Jr.)
  • 1944: Don't Explain (with Arthur Herzog, Jr.)
  • 1949: Somebody's on My Mind
  • 1949: Now or Never (with Curtis R. Lewis)
  • 1950: You Gotta Show Me
  • 1954: Stormy Blues
  • 1956: Lady Sings the Blues (with Alberta Nichols)
  • 1956: My Man

Discography

Her discography names around 125 singles (78 RPM and 45 RPMs), single albums, EPs, numerous studio and live long-playing records as well as more than 1200 compilation albums, box sets and other re-releases that have been released after her death.

The singer had recorded from 1933 to 1942 for Columbia Records , from 1939 to 1944 mainly for Commodore Records and the Army label V-Disc, from 1944 to 1950 recordings followed with Decca Records . In 1951 some titles were created for Aladdin. From 1952 to 1957 she was under contract with Norman Granz (labels: Clef, Mercury and Verve). Her penultimate album Lady in Satin was released on Columbia Records and her last recordings in 1959 on MGM Records .

According to the charts, the best-known titles she has interpreted include:

  • The way you look tonight; Who Loves You ?, I Can't Give You Anything but Love, all 1936
  • Pennies from Heaven, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, Carelessly, all 1937
  • I'm Gonna Lock My Heart, 1938

literature

- chronological -

Web links

Commons : Billie Holiday  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rosie Findlay, et al .: 1001 photographies qu'il faut avoir vues dans la vie; Billie Holiday au Downbeat Club de New York . Ed .: Paul Lowe. Éditions Flammarion, Paris 2018, ISBN 978-2-08-142221-6 , pp. 373 (Original Edition : 1001 Photographs You Must See In Your Lifetime , Quintessence Edition, 2017).
  2. ↑ See the information from the Accuracy Project . Birth names and dates are incorrectly stated in many reference books.
  3. ↑ Sometimes “Gough”, the name of her future stepfather, is also given. Until she adopted her stage name, she called herself Eleanora Fagan. It was the last name of her maternal grandfather, which her mother also used.
  4. ↑ The birth certificate lists a Frank DeVriese as her father.
  5. ↑ Stuart Nicholson: Billie Holiday , pp. 18-23, ISBN 978-1-55553-303-8 .
  6. ↑ Nicholson, pp. 22-24.
  7. ↑ Nicholson, p. 25.
  8. ↑ Nicholson, pp. 27 and 31.
  9. ↑ Nicholson, p. 32.
  10. ^ Billie Holiday biography. In: biography.com
  11. ↑ Ken Vail : Lady Day's Diary. Sanctuary Publishing, London 1997, ISBN 1-86074-131-2 , p. 32.
  12. ↑ Nicholson, p. 65.
  13. ↑ Peter Niklas Wilson (Ed.): Jazz Classics. Reclam, ISBN 978-3-15-030030-5 , p. 221.
  14. ^ Billie Holiday Companion: Seven Decades of Commentary (Companion Series) by Leslie Gourse, pp. 73f.
  15. ↑ Nicholson, pp. 93f.
  16. ↑ 1937 sessions. In: Billieholidaysongs.com , accessed April 21, 2016.
  17. ↑ Nicholson, pp. 96f.
  18. ↑ Nicholson, p. 113.
  19. ↑ Jazz History: The Standards (1940s). Jazzstandard.com.
  20. ↑ Nicholson, p. 133.
  21. ↑ Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?) (1942). In: jazzstandards.com
  22. ↑ Nicholson, pp. 152-157.
  23. ↑ Lady Sings the Blues. ISBN 978-84-399-2465-4 , pp. 147-149.
  24. ↑ Nicholson, p. 167.
  25. ^ Billboard Magazine December 22, 1956.
  26. ↑ Volker Schmidt: Between satin and sugar cane. In: Die Zeit , July 17, 2009.
  27. ↑ Orson Welles. In: NNDB
  28. ↑ Orson Welles Fan Page.
  29. ↑ Gettin 'Funky With Billie Holiday And Tallulah Bankhead! ( Memento from September 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  30. ^ Billie Holiday and Tallulah Bankhead.
  31. ^ Sheela Lambert: Tallulah Bankhead: actress, wit, legend, beauty and bisexual icon. In: Examiner.com , March 15, 2010.
  32. ↑ Billie Holiday. In: NNDB
  33. ↑ Jazz Klassiker, Reclam p. 226.
  34. ↑ Summary of swr
  35. ^ Billie Holiday Songs
personal data
SURNAME Holiday, Billie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harris, Elinore (maiden name); Fagan, Eleonora; Fagan Gough, Eleonora; Gough McKay, Eleanora; Gough Harris, Eleonora; Fagan, Elionor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA
DATE OF DEATH 17th July 1959
Place of death New York , USA