As a result of her narcoticsĬonviction, she could not get the necessary cabaret license.ĭuring the Nineteen Fifties Miss Holiday's voice began to lose its useful elasticity. Ten days after her release Miss Holiday gave a concert at Carnegie Hall to a packed house but, although she appeared at concert halls in New York from time to time after that, she was not allowed to appear in New York night clubs. Va., for a year and a day in an attempt to rid herself of the habit. ![]() She was arrested for a narcotics violation and, at her own request, was committed to a Federal rehabilitation establishment at Alderson, In 1947, a cloud that had been gathering over Miss Holiday and which was to cover the rest of her career, burst on her. It was at Cafe Society that she introduced one of her best-known songs, "Strange Fruit," a biting depictionĭuring that engagement, too, she established trade-marks that followed her for many years-the swatch of gardenias in her hair, her fingers snapping lazily with the rhythm, her head cocked back at a jaunty angle as she sang. Miss Holiday came into her own as a singing star when she appeared at Cafe Society in New York in 1938 for the major part of the year. Young was identified by jazz bands, "Pres." She was the vocalist with the Basie band for a brief time duringġ937 and the next year she signed for several months with Artie Shaw's band. ![]() She in turn created the name by which Mr. Young who gave her the nickname by which she was known in jazz circles-Lady Day. Basie's tenor saxophonist, the late Lester Young. On many of these recordings the accompanying musicians were members of Count Basie's band,Ī group with which she felt a special affinity. Two years later Miss Holiday started a series of recordings with groups led by Teddy Wilson, the pianist, which established her reputation in the jazz world. Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan. She made her first recording, "Your Mother's Son-in-Law" in November, 1933, singing one nervous chorus with a band that included in addition to Mr. Miss Holiday had been singing in Harlem in this fashion for a year or two when she was heard by John Hammond, a jazz enthusiast, who recommended her to Benny Goodman, at that time a relatively unknown clarinet player who was the leader on occasional recording She sang "Trav'lin' All Alone" and then "Body and Soul" and got a job-$2 a night for six nights a week working from midnight until about 3 o'clock the next afternoon. ![]() The pianist, taking pity on her, asked if she could sing. She danced the only step she knew for fifteen choruses and was turned down. Scrubbing floors, and when this failed she started along Seventh Avenue in Harlem one night looking for any kind of work.Īt Jerry Preston's Log Cabin, a night club, she asked for work as a dancer. But when the depression struck, her mother was unable to find work. They eked out a precarious living for a while, partially from her mother's employment as a housemaid. She came to New York with her mother in 1928. Miss Holiday took her professional name from her father, Clarence Holiday, a guitarist who played with Fletcher Henderson's band in the Nineteen Twenties and from one of the favorite movie actresses of her childhood, Billie Dove. The first and major influence on her singing came when as a child she ran errands for the girls in a near-by brothel in return for the privilege of listening to recordings by Mr. She was the daughter of a 13-year-old mother, Sadie Fagan, and a 15-year-old father who were married there years after she was born. She was named Eleanora Fagan after her birth in Baltimore. Miss Holiday became a singer more from desperation than desire. Miss Holiday set a pattern during her most fruitful years that has proved more influential than that of almost any other jazz singer, except the two who inspired her, Louis Armstrong and the late Bessie Smith. She had been under arrest in her hospital bed since June 12 for illegal possession of narcotics. Miss Holiday had lived at 26 West Eighty-seventh Street. The immediate cause of death was given as congestion of the lungs complicated by heart failure. ![]() JOBITUARY Billie Holiday Dies Here at 44 Jazz Singer Had Wide Influence BY THE NEW YORK TIMESīillie Holiday, famed jazz singer, died yesterday in Metropolitan Hospital. Newspaper in Education (NIE) Teacher Resources Billie Holiday Dies Here at 44 Jazz Singer Had Wide Influence
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