Similar to the founding principles of the blues, Billie Holiday’s life was marred with both the harsh realities of personal woes and boisterous changes of tempo. Nicknamed “Lady Day,” the Philadelphia-born singer used her tumultuous life experiences to create timeless jazz records. And within her music, her style became so unique that she altered the genre norm with songs like“I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Strange Fruit,” and “All of Me.” She also set jazz standards with songs like“What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Easy Living.”
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Lady Day, however, was taken from this world too soon at just 44 years old. Read below as we take a look into her last days and the legacy she left behind.
Billie Holiday passed away on July 17, 1959, of pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis, or liver disease, in the Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The cirrhosis was brought on by her long-fought battle with addiction and substance abuse. At the time of her death, her addictions had overrun her life to the point that jazz critic Leonard Feather noticed that the singer had lost 20 pounds, a cause of concern among those close to Holiday.
Adding another layer to the tragedy of her death was the social and political climate of the United States at the time. As a Black woman who had the strength to sing songs like “Strange Fruit,” Holiday had been held under intense scrutiny by authorities. And, while she lay dying, the police were arranging for an indictment of the singer.
Author Gilbert Millstein, who helped write the liner notes for Holiday’s live Carnegie Hall Concert album, described Holiday’s death this way: “[I]n 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.
“She had been strikingly beautiful, but her talent was wasted. 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.”
Wide-Reaching Legacy
Despite the tragedy of Holiday’s death and the suffering that led to it, her music took on a life of its own. Today, Holiday is regarded as a pioneer in the jazz field, who not only pushed back on the status quo of sound but of topic, too. After her death, she was awarded four posthumous Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame despite not being classified as a rock artist.
“With her luminous voice, Billie Holiday changed jazz forever,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame stated on its website. “Her life was tough but so was she. Billie Holiday took her pain and channeled it into haunting vocal performances that resonated in your spine.”
In 1958, Frank Sinatra told Ebony magazine just how important Holiday’s music was for the world. “With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius,” he said. “It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.”
Holiday was open about her bisexuality despite not being socially acceptable at the time. After years of substance abuse, Holiday's body had grown weary of the abuse and she died from heart failure on July 17, 1959, at age 44.
She won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Nesuhi Ertugan Jazz Hall of Fame in 2004. Holiday, known for her deeply moving and personal vocals, remains a popular musical legend more than fifty years after her death.
Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958. Holiday died of heart failure on July 17, 1959, at age 44. Holiday won four Grammy Awards, all of them posthumously, for Best Historical Album. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
When Holiday died, Sinatra holed up in his penthouse for two days, weeping, drinking and playing her records. The Holiday-Sinatra bond, in other words, was a classic relationship of guru and disciple. Certainly, Holiday was the more precocious of the two.
Billie Holiday was one of the greatest jazz singers from the 1930s to the '50s. She had no formal musical training, but, with an instinctive sense of musical structure and a deep knowledge of jazz and blues, she developed a singing style that was deeply moving and individual.
Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.
For the next seven years, Holiday would slip deeper into alcoholism and begin to lose control of her once perfect voice. In 1959, after the death of her good friend Lester Young and with almost nothing to her name, Billie Holiday died at the age of forty-four.
For the first 10 years of her life, Billie Holiday was cared for mostly by others, because her mother had taken a traveling job with the railroad. Billie frequently skipped school and when she was 9 years old, she was sent to a Catholic “reform” school.
In the 30s Billie Holiday and Lester Young recorded a series of memorable sides together. "He's Funny That Way," "Travlin' All Alone" and "Easy Livin," are just a few. This edition of Riverwalk Jazz touches on their musical collaboration and the personal friendship between these two titans of jazz.
During her lifetime, Billie Holiday battled internal and external demons, yet rather than give in to the pain and hardships she experienced, she used her voice to sing about and bring attention to racial injustices that she had witnessed.
Outraged at the disparity between men's and women's prizes at major tournaments, King spearheaded the drive for equal prize money and equal treatment of women. She helped establish the Virginia Slims Tour, founded the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation, and co-founded World TeamTennis.
Known for her innovative style and unique approach, Billie Holiday became one of the most famous female jazz artists of all time, with her work “changing jazz forever.” Known as “Lady Day,” Billie Holiday continues to inspire artists today.
Billie Holiday. The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a 2021 American biographical drama film about singer Billie Holiday, based on the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari.
Strange Fruit quickly became an anthem of the anti-lynching movement and the first significant song of the then fledging Civil Rights Movement. The song forced listeners to confront the brutality of lynching.
Introduction: My name is Domingo Moore, I am a attractive, gorgeous, funny, jolly, spotless, nice, fantastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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