Billie Holliday
Most people know that jazz great Billie Holiday died penniless and riddled with drugs and alcohol on 17th July 1959 of cirrhosis of the liver. They know less about her life which was both brilliant and catastrophic.
At the age of about 14, after a turbulent childhood, she began singing in nightclubs in Harlem where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice and arranged for her to sign a recording contract with Brunswick. Many jazz standards followed and throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success as a recording and concert artist. By 1947, Holiday was at her commercial peak, having made $250,000 in the three previous years.
In 1939 she was introduced to a song about lynching by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Strange Fruit was the cornerstone of Billie’s career, a song which encapsulated her feelings of hopelessness and loneliness, her declaration of solidarity with her people. She introduced it in some trepidation at an integrated club in Greenwich Village, fearing possible retaliation.
She later said that the imagery of the song spoke to her of her father’s death. He had been denied medical treatment for a fatal lung disorder because of racial prejudice, and Strange Fruit reminded her of him. “I have to keep singing it…..because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the South”.
Another song that grew directly out her own family experience was God Bless the Child. Holiday had been supporting her mother’s gambling habit but when she asked her for some of her own money back, she was turned down flat.
Set against the horrors of her family and the mistakes she made in trusting men, managers and record companies, she had a highly successful professional life.
Then the drugs and alcohol took over and, by the late 1940s, she was beset with legal troubles which culminated in a prison sentence. On May 16, 1947, Holiday was arrested for possession of narcotics. Nobody defended her, including her own lawyer who didn’t bother to turn up in court. The drug possession conviction caused her to lose her New York City Cabaret Card, preventing her working anywhere that sold alcohol; thereafter, she performed in concert venues and theatres.
On 27 March 1948, Holiday played Carnegie Hall to a sold-out crowd. Two thousand seven hundred tickets were sold in advance, and she remained a successful concert performer throughout the 1950s, with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall.
But she couldn’t resist the drugs, the alcohol and the circumstances of her life.
She had been betrayed by almost everyone she had ever loved, robbed of her life’s savings by her last husband, Louis McKay, a mob enforcer. And she ended up in a New York hospital, dying of cirrhosis of the liver and heart disease, a day before she was due to be be arraigned yet again for possession of narcotics.
There have been many tributes to Billie Holiday’s genius as a singer of jazz and popular music. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, she remains a significant influence on singers to this day. Frank Sinatra said, “Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years”.
I really wanted you to see and hear Billie Holiday’s heart-rending classic version of Strange Fruit but this is the only version I’ve been able to find. Apologies, but I hope you’ll agree that it’s worth having, despite the poor quality.
The post Ruth Leon recommends… Billie Holliday – Strange Fruit appeared first on Slippedisc.
