Holiday, Billie

By: Susan C. Cook

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Holiday, Billie

Sex:  Female

Born:  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
7 April 1915

Died:  New York, New York, United States
17 July 1959

Activity/Profession:  Jazz Singer

(b. 7 April 1915; d. 17 July 1959),
jazz singer.

Billie Holiday never won a jazz popularity poll during her lifetime. Readers of Metronome, Melody Maker, and Down Beat magazines consistently chose Holiday second, third, even tenth after Ella Fitzgerald, Mildred Bailey, Helen O'Connell, and Jo Stafford, all of whom, with the exception of Fitzgerald, were white, and all of whom sang with commercially popular big bands.

Among jazz critics and historians, however, there is little question that Billie Holiday was the greatest jazz singer ever recorded. Coming into her own a generation after classic blues singers like Bessie Smith, Holiday created a place for herself outside the limited confines of the “girl singer” role within the big band, setting standards by which other jazz singers continued to be judged and influencing singers as diverse in style as Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Carmen McRae, and Lena Horne.

Billie Holiday, “Lady Day,” photographed on 23 March 1949 by Carl Van Vechten.

Library of Congress

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Holiday began recording in the 1930s during the emergence of the big band or swing band style of jazz. Although her work with Count Basie attests to her ability to perform with such ensembles, her style was better suited to small combos in which she found the freedom to be a jazz soloist. Recordings made during the twenty-six years of her career reveal her skill as a re-composer of melody and a rhythmic innovator, the hallmarks of a skilled jazz improviser.

Humble Beginnings

Born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to teenaged parents, Holiday grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and ostensibly took her first name from her screen idol, Billie Dove. Her father, later a guitarist with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, never lived with the family, and Holiday was raised by her mother and other relatives. Her childhood was marked by deprivation, cruelty, and sexual abuse, and she spent a year at the Catholic-run House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls. As a teenager she rejoined her mother, who had moved to New York City, and she may have worked for a time as a prostitute while learning her craft as a singer.

The beginnings of Holiday's career are unclear. She claimed not to read music, but family friends remember her singing as a child, and by her early teens she was performing for tips and jamming with other musicians in Baltimore's waterfront entertainment district. In her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday stresses the early influences of recordings by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Although not a traditional blues singer, Holiday certainly shared with classic blues singers like Smith an emotional identification with her text, a gift for emphasizing particular words and syllables in performance, and a fondness for slow tempos. Similarly, although she did not imitate Louis Armstrong's vocal scatting technique, as did Ella Fitzgerald, Holiday's singing was marked by the rhythmic flexibility and swing characteristic of Armstrong's trumpet performances. Holiday was not a big-voiced belter like Armstrong or Smith, but she used the distinctive timbre and limited range of her voice to their best advantage, producing solos marked by subtlety and nuance.

By 1931 Holiday was singing in New York City accompanied solely by piano. For a time, she was part of a show featuring bassist George “Pops” Foster and tap dancer Charles “Honi” Coles. In 1933 John Hammond, a white jazz record producer and critic, heard the then eighteen-year-old Holiday singing in Monette Moore's club accompanied by the house pianist, Dot Hill. Hammond immediately wrote about her in the British journal Melody Maker, describing the individual vocal style and delivery that set Holiday apart from other singers of the time.

Hammond, who as a record producer was always looking for new talent, arranged for Holiday to record, and she cut two sides in 1933. Ironically, Hammond recorded Holiday within twenty-four hours of producing Bessie Smith's final recordings. Although Holiday's sidemen included well-known and established white performers Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, and Gene Krupa, the songs she was given to record, “Your Mother's Son-in-Law” and “Riffin' the Scotch,” were second-rate tunes. However, for her first time in front of a recording microphone, accompanied by musicians she did not know and in a musical and racially integrated manner to which she was unaccustomed, the teenaged Holiday sounded assured and confident, if lacking in the rhythmic freedom that marked her later work.

Before Holiday returned to a recording studio in 1935, she took part in Duke Ellington's short film depiction of African American life, Symphony in Black. Holiday performed “Big City Blues,” a twelve-bar blues chorus sung during the second scene, entitled “A Triangle,” and her brief appearance demonstrated her musical growth as a singer with a captivating stage presence. While it was not uncommon for popular white female singers, such as Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney, to make the transition to Hollywood and the film industry, black women's opportunities were limited. Holiday made one other screen appearance in New Orleans (1946). Playing opposite her musical mentor Louis Armstrong, she performed three numbers in an otherwise demeaning role as the singing maid to the white, blond leading lady, Dorothy Patrick.

In July 1935 Hammond arranged for Holiday to return to the recording studio accompanied now by the black pianist Teddy Wilson and his pickup ensemble. Holiday found that these musicians and their spontaneous approach suited her style. She particularly enjoyed working with Count Basie's sideman, the saxophonist Lester Young, who began recording with her in 1937 and whose approach was ideal for providing instrumental responses and counter melodies during her solos, as in “When a Woman Loves a Man” and “I'll Never Be the Same.” Holiday credited Young with giving her the nickname “Lady Day,” by which she was known from then on, a name that seemed to symbolize her desire for the racial respect and gender benefits accorded to white middle- and upper-class women.

Between 1935 and 1938, Holiday released some eighty titles on the Brunswick label marketed to the black jukebox audience, earning a reputation as a one-take artist who learned material quickly and had a fantastic ear. Although she was rarely given well-known songs to record, Holiday's performances demonstrated her improvisatory skill and contributed to her growing popularity with nightclub audiences. In 1935 she made the first of many successful appearances at Harlem's Apollo Theater. By 1936 she was recording under her own name, as well as with Teddy Wilson.

Basie and Further Success

John Hammond also championed the work of Count Basie, and in 1937 he took Basie to hear Holiday and encouraged him to take her on as a singer with his band. Basie enthusiastically agreed, and Holiday performed with the band for a year. Due to contractual problems the two were not able to record together, but three air checks from Savoy and Meadowbrook Ballroom radio performances show that Holiday was capable of meeting the rhythmic challenges of one of the hottest bands of the era. The reasons given for her departure vary, depending on the source, but Holiday and Basie remained friends, and she made occasional appearances with the band in the 1940s.

Holiday went on to perform with the white clarinetist Artie Shaw and his band in 1939, becoming one of the first black performers to perform with an all-white ensemble onstage and in public, not just on recordings. Contractual problems again kept Holiday from recording with the band, and her time with Shaw's band was fraught with tensions over her style, which remained less popular with his audiences (who were used to a mainstream pop style), and especially over racial politics. Shaw hired the white performer Helen Forrest as a backup singer when establishments refused to allow Holiday to perform with the all-white ensemble or when conflicts over Holiday's ap-proach to her material arose, and that did little to alle-viate tensions. Holiday's descriptions of her time with Shaw, particularly on tour, formed some of the most poignant parts of her autobiography. She describes the difficulty of obtaining food and lodging for herself as well as her experiences in public with white male band members, who often assumed she was a prostitute.

By 1939, when she was just twenty-four, Holiday had gained significant recognition through her appearances at Café Society, a club opened by Barney Josephson in December 1938 for the express purpose of providing entertainment to integrated audiences. It was within this context that Holiday came to be identified with the song “Strange Fruit.” Written under the pseudonym Lewis Allan by Abel Meeropol, “Strange Fruit” is about lynching; in it, lynched bodies are described as “strange fruit,” the “bitter crop” of southern racial politics. The song was unusual for the directness of its message, and many critics, including Hammond, were uncomfortable with Holiday's adoption of it as a kind of anthem, which she performed in a dramatic manner. Columbia Records held her contract at the time and was unwilling to record “Strange Fruit,” but Holiday managed to record the song on Milt Gabler's independent Commodore label. The recording sold well, with one of Holiday's blues numbers, “Fine and Mellow,” on the flip side. Following her time at Café Society, Holiday became a much-sought-after performer in New York City and elsewhere. “Strange Fruit” remains one of the earliest examples of jazz protest songs.

In 1944 Holiday signed with Decca, a label with a reputation for mainstream popular music rather than for jazz but the label for which Gabler then worked. Holiday decided she wanted strings as part of her backup ensemble, and Gabler complied. “Lover Man,” her first recording in this new style, became her best-selling record to date. During her six years with Decca, Holiday recorded her own compositions, “God Bless the Child” and “Don't Explain.” She also had success with the material of other writers, recording songs like “Good Morning, Heartache,” by Irene Higginbotham, as well as some standards.

In 1947 Holiday entered a private clinic to try and kick her drug habit, but some three weeks after her discharge, she was arrested for drug possession. The circumstances surrounding her arrest remain unclear, but rather than receive further treatment, as was typically allowed white celebrity addicts, Holiday was sentenced to a year and a day at the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. She served nine and one-half months, and upon her release for good behavior, New York City authorities revoked her cabaret card, making it impossible for her to perform in local clubs. Holiday was forced to look for work outside New York City and in special concert venues in the city, such as at Carnegie Hall and on national and European tours.

Decca records let Holiday's contract lapse in 1950, and she was without a recording label until 1952, when she signed with Norman Granz's Verve label. Granz wanted Holiday's recordings to recapture the spontaneity of her earlier sessions with Teddy Wilson, and so she shed the rehearsed orchestral arrangements of the Decca releases. With the formidable backup talent of Oscar Peterson, Bobby Tucker, Ben Webster, Paul Quinichette, Harry “Sweets” Edison, and others, Holiday recorded almost one hundred songs for Granz. Although these recordings share the informality of the Brunswick releases, Holiday's material consisted of standards, like “Blue Moon” and “Stormy Weather,” as well as remakes of some of her earlier numbers, such as “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” recordings that allowed her listeners to hear how she reworked her material over time.

In 1958 Holiday recorded her last and most popular album, Lady in Satin, featuring lush string arrangements by Ray Ellis. Holiday's voice is noticeably different from the one captured in her Verve releases. Its cracked, harsh timbre, so apparent when accompanied by the strings, led several critics to call it her worst album. Holiday's talent shines through, however, and her rhythmic flexibility and careful shaping of the text remain as true as ever.

Prior to her Lady in Satin release, Holiday made one other recording that stands as a testament to her career as a jazz soloist. In December 1957 she took part in a special CBS program, The Sound of Jazz. Produced by Robert Herridge with the advice of Whitney Balliett and Nat Hentoff, the show presented nine live performances by the leading jazz musicians of the time. Holiday performed her own “Fine and Mellow” blues with assisting solos by Ben Webster, her old friend Lester Young (just days before his death), Vic Dickerson, Gerry Mulligan, Doc Cheatham, Coleman Hawkins, and Roy Eldridge. Gerry Mulligan's presence integrated the otherwise all-black ensemble. Holiday performed in a circle with the other musicians. Her singing is true and rhythmically flexible, and she takes obvious delight in the work of the others. On her remaining choruses, she enters, not as a singer carrying the blues text, but as a distinctive soloist in the jazz ensemble.

Billie Holiday died in New York City from the long-term effects of drug addiction. She was forty-four years old. A lifelong Roman Catholic, she was buried in Saint Raymond's Catholic Cemetery in the Bronx. Thousands of friends and fans attended her requiem mass held at Saint Paul the Apostle Cathedral. Years later, Holiday's life and musical legacy benefited from the critical attention of black feminist historians, such as Angela Y. Davis, and other scholars interested in her position as a black professional woman and in her distinctive autobiographical voice. Time selected her recording of “Strange Fruit” as its “Song of the Century” in 1999, offering the fitting tribute that in it, “history's greatest jazz singer comes to terms with history itself.”

See also Jazz.

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