Ilse Aichinger
Jamika Ajalon
Hannah Arendt
Lilly Axster
Simone de Beauvoir
Monika Bernold
Dagmar Fink
Hannah Fröhlich
Tom Holert
Billie Holiday
Belinda Kazeem
Katherine Klinger
Anna Kowalska
Nicola Lauré al-Samarai
Adrian Piper
Yvonne Rainer
Rúbia Salgado
Shirley Tate
|
 Billie Holiday (1915-1959)
Billie Holiday was born April 7, 1915, as Eleanora Harris in Philadelphia. As soon as 1929, she began performing in clubs and adopted the name under which she is now known, combining the first name of actress Billie Dove and the surname of her father, Clarence Holiday. Holiday, also known as Lady Day, a nickname given her by Lester Young, is among the greatest singers in modern jazz. She recorded songs with Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, sang with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw big bands, and had a successful solo career. With the song Strange Fruit, that she would sing at the end of her sets at the legendary Café Society, she achieved world fame. In 1956, she published an autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. The same year, she sang her two last concerts at the prestigious Carnegie Hall. Thirteen songs recorded at the second concert were released posthumously in 1961 on the album The Essential Billie Holiday. She died on July 17, 1959, in New York.
Billie Holiday was one of the first jazz singers to perform with white musicians, thus overcoming racist barriers. In spite of this, she was often obliged to use rear entrances and wait backstage in remote rooms. Especially when touring with mixed bands, Holiday and the other Black musicians experienced racism. The singer found it particularly degrading when her face was darkened with make-up for performances because white audiences allegedly considered her skin color too light.
In her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Davis refers to Billie Holiday’s working-class background and uses her example to examine the complex connections between racism, sexism, and classism. Biographers and colleagues (all white middle-class males) dispute any interest in political issues on Holiday’s part. Davis contrasts this with Holiday’s own statements, showing how present political and social motifs were in her work. One little known fact, for example, is that during the 1940s, Holiday included a communist anti-war song in her repertoire – until the FBI intervened.
Selected compositions
1936: Billie’s Blues alias: I Love My Man
1939: Our Love Is Different
1939: Long Gone Blues
1939: Fine and Mellow
1939: Everything Happens for the Best (with Tab Smith)
1940: Tell Me More and More and Then Some
1941: God Bless the Child (with Arthur Herzog, Jr.)
1944: Don’t Explain (with Arthur Herzog, Jr.)
1949: Somebody’s On My Mind
1949: Now or Never (with Curtis R. Lewis)
1950: You Gotta Show Me
1954: Stormy Blues
1956: Lady Sings the Blues (with Alberta Nichols)
1956: My Man
Discography
Billie Holiday’s discography includes around 125 singles and EPs, many studio and live albums, as well as over 1,200 compilation albums, boxed sets, and reissues released after her death. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Selected publications
Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, New York 1998
Billie Holiday, with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, New York 1956/1984
/
Sources:
Wikipedia
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
www.billieholiday.com |
|
