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🇺🇸 United States · 1930–1959

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday —known as Lady Day— was born as Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, and grew up in Fells Point, a neighborhood in Baltimore. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, was thirteen when she had her. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was fifteen. Clarence was a guitarist and bassist of jazz, played with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, and left when Billie was still a baby. Sadie, too young to take care of herself, often left her in the care of relatives of dubious reputation.At ten years old, she was sent to a Catholic school after she admitted to being raped. Two years later, with the help of a family friend, she managed to escape.

In 1927, mother and daughter moved to New Jersey, and then to Brooklyn. Already in New York, Billie helped her mother with domestic work and also engaged in prostitution.Regarding her paternity, there is a complicated story. The birth certificate archived in Baltimore lists Frank DeViese as the father, not Clarence. Some historians see this as an error by the hospital or some official —as Donald Clarke states in Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon—. Clarence acknowledged paternity, but his role was minimal. Billie rarely saw him, and when she did, she would take money from him by threatening to tell his girlfriend that she was his daughter.What most defines her music is how it sounded: she sang with an intensity that came from within, from her own experiences poured into the lyrics.

Blues Jazz swing traditional pop vocal jazz 1910s

3 Albums

48 Songs

2,4M Listeners/mo

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Strange Fruit

Lady Sings the Blues

2:43 02

Say It Isn't So

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

3:01 03

I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

3:55 04

I Wished On The Moon

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

6:48 05

Always

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

3:57 06

Everything Happens To Me

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

6:20 07

Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

5:00 08

Ain't Misbehavin'

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

4:38 09

Trav'lin Light

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

3:07 10

I Must Have That Man!

Lady Sings the Blues · 1956

3:04

3 album|s · 1956 — 2005

Full discography

2005 ★ Essential

Lover Man

9 song|s · Blues

1958 ★ Essential

Lady in Satin

23 song|s · Blues

1956 ★ Essential

Lady Sings the Blues

16 song|s · Blues

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Biography

She herself acknowledged the debt to blues interpreters like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey —in her autobiography, she wrote that she always wanted 'the great sound of Bessie and the feeling of Pops'—, and also to Louis Armstrong. Her closest musical partner was the tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Lester Young. All of this was mixed with a mastery of swing and a vocal ability that adapted to the content of each song.Frank Sinatra described her as her greatest influence and as the most important influence in American popular singing over the last twenty years. The critic Robert Christgau said she was possibly the best singer of the century.

And Strange Fruit, one of her songs, was chosen by the magazine Time in 1999 as the best song of the twentieth century. She died in New York on July 17, 1959.