Billie Holiday
I.J. 9/19/14
Billie Holiday gave jazz a new voice, and also had a part in pop music in the 1930's to 1940's. She was of African American heritage, which unfortunately later in her career was a bit of a disadvantage in the musicindustry in that time. Her father left her and her mother when she was young to pursue a career as a jazz guitarist; she later met him in some of her ventures as a young jazz singer, when he was playing in someone named Fletcher Henderson's band. Holiday had a rough up-bringing as her mother was often leaving to serve on passenger railroads, which were known at that time as "Transportation jobs".
At as young as age fourteen, she joined her mother in Harlem, New York, and shortly after arriving she became a prostitute, her mother was in prostitution, too. However, soon they both got arrested, and that came to an end. Holiday started off her jazz career singing in various night clubs in Harlem, and got a recording debut from the producer John Hammond, with a singer called Benny Goodman at the age of 18, in 1933.
By the late 1930's Billie Holiday had become quite known, and had recorded with Count Basie and Artie Shaw. She became known as "Lady Day", in her singer songwriter career. She recorded a song called "Strange Fruit" based on a poem about lynching, which got her much fame. Many of her songs got into the "top brackets", and one sold a million copies. However she still had some trouble with her fame at times, due to her racial difference, which many people disputed in the music industry.
Making so much money was not always a good thing for Holiday, as she also had a drug addiction. When she got a roll in a movie, making ten thousand dollars a week, she ended up spending much of it on heroin. She eventually got arrested for possessing drugs in 1947, but when she got released, she was welcomed back to the music world with more success.
However, she didn't have much of a comeback, as her addiction got worse, and she got into several bad relationships. She still performed, but often lost her earnings. In May, 1959, she was taken to the New York Metropolitan Hospital, after collapsing. She had congestion of the lungs complicated by heart failure. She died in July of that year, on the 17th, diagnosed with Liver Cirrhosis. She was arrested on her death bed forpossessing narcotics, with almost no money.
Though she somewhat destroyed herself, she is still known and admired as a great jazz artist today.
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