Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday. The name evokes smoky jazz clubs, half drunk tumblers of whiskey and the ache in your chest every time you hear her sing.
Born Eleanora Fagen in 1915, Billie lived a hardscrabble life. Abandoned by her father as a young child, and raped at age 10, she began a life of addiction and painful living that haunted her until her dying day.
After her rape, she was sent away to a reformatory for “seducing her attacker”. The trauma and mistrust she developed, soon led her to a life of prostitution. She would listen to jazz music on the brothels record players, developing a lifelong love for the sort of music she could spill her pain into.
Alternating time spent as a prostitute, and time in jail, Eleanora soon began
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According to sources, he was a “shoot first” sort of officer and had no sympathy for those he deemed to be dope fiends.
And he saw his chance to make a name for himself the very next time that Billie was caught with drugs and arrested. Anslinger was quite happy to see her put on trial and be sentenced to a year of hard labor in a woman’s prison. He was pleased as punch, all puffed up like a banty rooster. This was the very break he’d been waiting for. The conviction hit her hard, and affected her career, causing her to loser her cabaret performer license.
After several more brushes with the law and a continued heroin habit, Billie, “Lady Day” Holiday, released her biography, titled “Lady Sings the Blues”. The book depicted the struggles she had faced and her rise to fame. Shortly after the book was released, she once again faced arrest due to her drug usage. Her success declined even further, and it would be several years until she produced another hit record.
“Holiday in Satin” was released in 1958, and though her voice was never the same, this album managed to make the vocal damage she had, sound good! It gave a new texture, a new layer of emotion to her work that had never been seen