Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
but spent most of her poverty stricken childhood in Baltimore. Lady Day, as she was named by
Lester Young, had to overcome many tragedies in her lifetime and yet still became one of the
most popular jazz-blues vocalists of all time.
Billie's Parents, Sally Fagan and Clarence Holiday, were both born in Baltimore. They
married as teens and soon Sally gave birth to Eleanora Fagan. Shortly after the birth, Clarence
Holiday deserted his family to tour with Fletcher Henderson's band. Billie saw little of her
immediate family and she essentially grew up alone, feeling unloved and gaining a lifelong
inferiority complex that led to her taking great risks with her personal life. At age ten Billie was
victimized in a violent rape. When older she worked at a brothel were she cleaned the floors, it
was here that she first listened to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.
In 1927 she moved to New York City and not knowing any other life she made a living
prostituting herself. She still kept her dream of someday becoming a singer and eventually
convinced the manager of a small nightclub in the city to let her sing a few songs with the house
band. The crowd loved her singing and she was soon discovered by John Hammond. He arranged
for her to record a couple of titles with Benny Goodman in 1933. Although those were not all
that successful, it was the start of her career.
In 1935 she meet up with a pianist named Teddy Wilson, who was in a pick up band. She
traveled with the band for a while and hit it off. People were beginning to learn about a great
singer who had a fresh new style that was a combination of Louis Armstrong's swinging and
Bessie Smith's sound. Over the next seven years she would go on to record some of the greatest
songs of her career. Lady Day was with Count Basie's Orchestra during much of 1937 but, she
was soon kicked out by Count Basie for trying to be too "independent and temperamental." Later
Lester Young and Buck Clayton began recording with Holiday and the music that the three of
them made was timeless. She worked with Artie Shaw's Orchestra for a time in 1938 but still
some problems existed, only one song was recorded and she had to deal with racism, not only
during a Southern tour but in Ne...
... middle of paper ...
...954 with Buddy DeFranco, Red Norvo, Jimmy Kiney, Sonny Clark
with the first piano solo, Beryl Booker with the second piano solo, Red Mitchell on bass, and
Elaine Leighton on drums. It started off with an incredible beat, the guitar, piano and the
trumpets were just painting a great piece. When Billie started singing you could tell that she was
feeling every word that came out of her mouth. The song spoke of the rotten men that she has
know and what really makes a good man, which was something she knew a lot about. One of my
favorite parts of the entire song was the trumpet solo, the trumpet in this song really made you
feel what Lady Day was singing about. The song was already swinging but with a solo like that it
just made you tilt back your head and want to snap your fingers to the beat.
Bibliography
Gourse, Leslie. Billie Holiday: The Tragedy and Triumph of A Lady. Donbury, Connecticut:
Franklin Watts. 1995.
Groothius, Neal. The Unofficial Billie Holiday Website. Bellsouth.net search engine.
http://users.bart.nl/~ecduzit/billie.htm
Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 1999. Holiday, Billie Article. Version 8.29.00.0912. Microsoft
Corporation 1993-1998
The record was a success and Waters went on tour and received great acclaim. She toured with Fletcher Henderson and the Black Swan Jazz Masters. The Chicago Defender and other newspapers gave the tour substantial notoriety. The tour increased Black Swan's revenues, and made Waters a top performer who became known for her shimmies and soft style of singing.
Soon after in 1905, Florence's family moved to Harlem, where she attended regular schooling. However, it was in Harlem where Florence joined her two older sisters in playing black vaudeville in local theatres as "The Mills Sisters". In 1916, Florence moved to Chicago where she became a member of the "Panama Trio" alongside Bricktop and Cora Green. They played at the Panama Café along with jazz notables Alberta Hunter, Glover Compton, and Mezz Mezzrow. Another admirer of the trio was the legendary Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who gave personal tap lessons to Florence.
Lynn moved to Nashville, Tennessee to continue her career and signed with a new record company called Decca Records. After this her next big hit came called “Success” and success
Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz artist and artist musician with a vocation traversing almost thirty years. Nicknamed "Woman Day" by her companion and music accomplice Lester Young, Holiday affected jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, firmly propelled by jazz instrumentalists, spearheaded another method for controlling stating and rhythm. She was known for her vocal conveyance and improvisational aptitudes, which compensated for her restricted range and absence of formal music instruction. There were other jazz vocalists with equivalent ability, however Holiday had a voice that caught the consideration of her crowd.
Ella was born in Newport News, Virginia on April 25, 1917. When alled “The First Lady of Song” by some fans. She was known for having beautiful tone, extended range, and great intonation, and famous for her improvisational scat singing. Ella sang during the her most famous song was “A-tiscket A-tasket”. Fitzgerald sang in the period of swing, ballads, and bebop; she made some great albums with other great jazz artists such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong. She influenced countless American popular singers of the post-swing period and also international performers such as the singer Miriam Makeba. She didn’t really write any of her own songs. Instead she sang songs by other people in a new and great way. The main exception
In 1933 Billie audition as a dancer when she was 18, but the judges said she was not good enough so they asked her if she could sing-she could. In 1939 Billy sang at a café called Café Society and the song was “Strange Fruit”. Holiday wanted the song to be recorded but it was forbidden because it was “too inflammatory” Strange Fruit is a song about racism. She did not want to sing it on many radio stations because they banned all the intense words in the song. She could have been killed by the Koo Klucks Klan if she sang that song. Promoters objected Billie Holiday because of her race. The style of her voice-often tries to sound like a horn instrument because she likes the sliding sound. She refused to sing like other singers. Billie slyly said on a radio interview,”I always wanted to sound like an instrument.” She changed her name to Billie Holiday because her favorite film star, Billie Dove. In 1944 Billie Holiday received the Esquire Magazine Gold Award for Best Leading Female Vocalist. She would then receive some more awards in the following years to come. She got the nickname “Lady Day”. She was discovered by John Hammond, a young producer at Monette’s, a Harlem night club. When he heard Billie’s voice he was
Born Gertrude Pridgett in Georgia in 1886 to parents who had both performed in the minstrel shows, she was exposed to music at a very early age. At the age of fourteen, she performed in a local talent show called “The Bunch of Blackberries,” and by 1900 she was regularly singing in public.2 Over the next couple of decades, she worked in a variety of traveling minstrel shows, including Tolliver's Circus and Musical Extravaganza, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels; she was one of the first women to incorporate the blues into minstrelsy. It was while working with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels that she met William Rainey, whom she married in 1904; together, they toured as “Ma and Pa Rainey: Assassinators of the Blues.” By the early 1920s, she was a star of the Theater Owners' Booking Agency (TOBA), which were white-...
Aretha Franklin is a well known pop, R&B, and gospel singer. She has been nicknamed “The Queen of Soul” and is an internationally known artist and a symbol of pride in the African American community. Her popularity soared in 1967 when she released an album containing songs “I Never Loved a Man”, “Respect”, and “Baby I Love You.” Throughout her career she has achieved fifteen Grammy Awards, Lifetime Achievement Award, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Legend Awards, and many Grammy Hall of Fame Awards. In 1987 she became the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Time magazine chose her as one of the most influential artists and entertainers of the 20th century. She sang at Dr. Martin Luther King’s funeral and at former President Bill Clinton’s inaugural party. Although she has all these accomplishments and awards there are other reasons that have driven Franklin to fame and landed her on the front cover of Time magazine on June 28, 1968. The reasons I believe allowed Aretha Franklin to become so successful are the following: Her family’s involvement with religion, the inspiring people that surrounded her, and the pain she suffered.
...e 1940’s. she overcame many great obstacles that most elderly women of her background wouldn’t be able to do because she a strong black independent woman she had to be strong for herself and her little grandchild who she loved very much and he was very vulnerable because he had swallowed lye which is a very toxic poison which burned his throat and left him scared for life that is the reason she makes that great path every time he needs his medication.
preserved the hippie ethic of that era- in fashion and have followed the band in
25, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois. She was an African American woman, who from a young age had
At the age of nineteen she met and married Louis Jones. Together they had two children Gail and Teddy (who later died in 1970 from kidney failure). While trying to get used to raising a family and having a career, she received a call from an agent, who had seen her at the Cotton Club, about a part in a movie. Her controlling husband allowed her to be in “The Duke is Tops” and also the musical revue “Blackbirds of 1939."
Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday were both prominent jazz singer-songwriters during the same time and masters in their own right, but their worlds could not have been further apart. In 1939, while they were both in the midst of experiencing mainstream success, Ella was touring with Ella and her Famous Orchestra and showcasing her perfect pitch and tone to the world while singing songs that would soon become standards to fellow singers and musicians. Billie was singing solo, comfortable with her limited range, and gaining the adoration of audiences nationwide who loved her soulful voice. Both of these historic singers made contributions to the art of jazz, with vocalists and instrumentalists still using elements of their style today. Ella
The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as “Lady Day” or “Lady”, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does it’s very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography.
Bessie Smith impacted Billie Holiday because Holiday learned a lot through Smith’s records by thinking that Smith was kind of a teacher. Even though Billie Holiday did not have a voice as powerful as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday’s musical interpretations and phrasing were similar to Bessie Smith. Frank Sinatra was impacted by Bessie Smith because he believed that she was an early blues genius. Sinatra’s voice was more polished than Smith’s voice, but he did find inspiration in the emotions she sang with in the records. Bessie Smith was a highly influential artist that had the power to help people with their music even after her death proving that she truly is “The Empress of Blues” ("Bessie Smith"