My devotion to Billie Holiday is almost religious at this point
The book Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth by John Szwed is a brilliant analysis of her legend and also talks a great deal about her skill as a musician, which most books about her ignore or gloss over.
If you’ve never read a Holiday biography, this isn’t the one to read. And if you haven’t immersed yourself in her recordings, most of it will fly over your head.
For beginners I’d recommend Donald Clarke’s definitive biography Wishing on the Moon, followed by Julia Blackburn’s book With Billie (which is not a biography per se, but is best described as fragments of stories and interviews that draw you ever closer to Holiday, creating the feeling that you have connected with her soul).
Then, after you’ve immersed yourself in her music, listening over and over again to her entire oeuvre, will you be ready for Szwed’s book. And then, with his meta-analysis of her legend in mind, read Holiday’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues.
Having thusly initiated yourself, you’ll find that Holiday lives in you, and that her music will see you through life’s joys and sorrows.
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | June 27, 2018 4:48 AM
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I love Billie Holiday. She and Ella Fitzgerald are my two favorite female vocalists of all time.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | June 27, 2018 2:10 AM
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I love David Sedaris’s Billie Holiday impression.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | June 27, 2018 2:10 AM
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She was bi., wasn't she? She and Tallulah Bankhead had a well known affair. I remember reading somewhere that somebody walked in and caught her "scissoring" with another woman.
Of course all hints of lesbianism were removed from the mostly fictional film version of her life, "Lady Sings The Blues." In that one her savior (at least he tries to be her savior) is Louis McKay, who in real life was an abusive SOB. He was her third husband; her other husbands were eliminated entirely from the film. The film was based on Holiday's memoir; written by a ghostwriter it was full of fiction, too.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | June 27, 2018 2:38 AM
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Yes, she was bi (and possibly just lesbian). She was only married twice, and McKay was her second husband. He was also a consultant on the film Lady Sings the Blues, and a total snake. Neither of her husband’s were good guys.
Pianist Billy Taylor said of Holiday that you could put her in a room full of 100 nice guys and one asshole, and she’d manage to find the asshole.
Her autobiography had a lot of inaccuracies, but the film was only loosely based on it, having almost nothing to do with Holiday’s life at all.
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | June 27, 2018 2:45 AM
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Why did her voice get so terrible? Was it the drugs?
I know people love her styling -- and I get that -- but her voice sounded like shit in her last decade.
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | June 27, 2018 2:50 AM
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Yes, it was drugs and alcohol. Her heart and liver started failing in the ‘50s.
She never had much range and while her voice deteriorated in her last decade, she was truly creative in the way she used what little she had left. And her ability to put across the emotional content of a song only improved.
Personally, I think she did some of her best work in the last decade. Her voice was not “pretty” in this period, particularly toward the very end, but it was the voice of someone who had packed a lot of living into her 44 years on this planet and had lived the words of the songs she sang.
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | June 27, 2018 3:28 AM
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Her voice was a jazz instrument. Nobody else could pack "Glad to Be Unhappy" so full of complex emotion. Sinatra came close on his 50s ballad albums.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | June 27, 2018 4:14 AM
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This is probably about the last live recording she did, 1958, she died early the next year. Even with her raspy voice it is very moving.
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | June 27, 2018 4:48 AM
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