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| This one feels right. |
“Her bluesy vocal style brought a slow and rough quality to the jazz standards that were often upbeat and light. This combination made for poignant and distinctive renditions of songs that were already standards. By slowing the tone with emotive vocals that reset the timing and rhythm, she added a new dimension to jazz singing.”
- PBS.org, American Masters Series (June 2006)
If your first experience of a piece of music or a particular performer happens decades after they impacted music, the fuss doesn’t always translate. Billie Holiday broke molds, minds and ran headlong into barriers her entire life. It’s a minor miracle she made it to adulthood, never mind an iconic place in pop culture. Because most of the fuss happened before the internet, I expect I’ll struggle to do her justice, but this feels like a good place to start.
“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.”
- Billie Holiday (Biography, 7 Things You May Not Know About Billie Holiday)
While minor questions exist, most sources agree Holiday was born to two unwed teenagers in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915. She spent more of her childhood with her mother, Sarah Julia “Sadie” Fagan – her father, Clarence Halliday, left to pursue a career in music was she was very young - but, even given those circumstances, her home life veered between unstable and outright dangerous, as well as various cities (mostly Baltimore). Sources also generally agree spent her tween-to-teen years in a reform school (sometimes for her own protection) and doing chores and running errands at a brothel (and even getting arrested for prostitution, though that could be a wrong place, wrong time thing). The Biography piece claims she worked for a chance to listen to the madam’s Victrola instead of getting paid. Holiday recalled Bessie Smith’s “West End Blues” as a favorite, but she loved Louis Armstrong too.
After moving to Harlem to live with her mother again, Holiday, then 17, found work as a dancer-for-hire. When the dancing work slowed down, she asked the manager to let her sing. Though lacking in musical education of any kind, Holiday’s talent immediately came through. Over the next couple of year, she partnered with a tenor sax player named Kenneth Holan, working small venue and building a reputation. She took her stage-name from two sources: “Billie” from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and “Holiday” from her long-estranged father, who performed under that name. (She met him as an adult when he played with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra.) With the Harlem Renaissance in full-swing, people in a position to help her took notice – including John Hammond, the famous impresario/Svengali who played a major role in pushing black jazz and blues into mainstream musical culture. Hammond wasted no time in getting her into a recording studio; Holiday was still 17 years old when she recorded her first songs – “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law” and “Riffin’ the Scotch” – both with a then-unknown Benny Goodman.
- PBS.org, American Masters Series (June 2006)
If your first experience of a piece of music or a particular performer happens decades after they impacted music, the fuss doesn’t always translate. Billie Holiday broke molds, minds and ran headlong into barriers her entire life. It’s a minor miracle she made it to adulthood, never mind an iconic place in pop culture. Because most of the fuss happened before the internet, I expect I’ll struggle to do her justice, but this feels like a good place to start.
“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.”
- Billie Holiday (Biography, 7 Things You May Not Know About Billie Holiday)
While minor questions exist, most sources agree Holiday was born to two unwed teenagers in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915. She spent more of her childhood with her mother, Sarah Julia “Sadie” Fagan – her father, Clarence Halliday, left to pursue a career in music was she was very young - but, even given those circumstances, her home life veered between unstable and outright dangerous, as well as various cities (mostly Baltimore). Sources also generally agree spent her tween-to-teen years in a reform school (sometimes for her own protection) and doing chores and running errands at a brothel (and even getting arrested for prostitution, though that could be a wrong place, wrong time thing). The Biography piece claims she worked for a chance to listen to the madam’s Victrola instead of getting paid. Holiday recalled Bessie Smith’s “West End Blues” as a favorite, but she loved Louis Armstrong too.
After moving to Harlem to live with her mother again, Holiday, then 17, found work as a dancer-for-hire. When the dancing work slowed down, she asked the manager to let her sing. Though lacking in musical education of any kind, Holiday’s talent immediately came through. Over the next couple of year, she partnered with a tenor sax player named Kenneth Holan, working small venue and building a reputation. She took her stage-name from two sources: “Billie” from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and “Holiday” from her long-estranged father, who performed under that name. (She met him as an adult when he played with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra.) With the Harlem Renaissance in full-swing, people in a position to help her took notice – including John Hammond, the famous impresario/Svengali who played a major role in pushing black jazz and blues into mainstream musical culture. Hammond wasted no time in getting her into a recording studio; Holiday was still 17 years old when she recorded her first songs – “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law” and “Riffin’ the Scotch” – both with a then-unknown Benny Goodman.
