Billie Holiday Research Papers

Eleanora Fagan, better known by her stage name Billie Holiday, was born on April 7, 1915 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was a famous Jazz performer, recognized for fragile, raspy voice that was etched with emotion as she sang and her geniuse imporvisation skills. Billie became one of the first African American vocalists to work with a white orchestra (Artie Shaw and his band) and tour the Southern U.S, which at the time was segregated. Several of her songs including “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”, “Embracable You” and “Easy Living¨ became jazz standards after several artist imitations and her rendition of “Strange Fruit” became one of her best selling records. Her performance popularized and brought attention to the contoversal song. Aroud the same time she released the song,

Recognized for developing different styles of jazz, such as jazz fusion, cool jazz and hard bop, he gained the nicknames Prince of Darkness and Picasso of Jazz. The creation of The Miles Nonet, which included the French horn, tuba and trumbone, created relaxing, melodies of improvisations which were recognized as the beginnings of cool jazz. These sing;es were later released in the album named the Birth of Cool in 1957. The albums Porgy and Bess and Kind of Blue, were albums created by Miles Davis’ Quintet and were labeled as some of the best jazz albums ever recorded and best selling jazz album of all time. During the development of jazz fusion, Miles released the album, Bitches Brew, which led to Miles being the first Jazz artist to be recongnized by Rolling Stone. The International Jazz Festival became popularized after Miles Davis asked his rival Wynton Marsalis to leave the stage using strong language when Marsalis attempted to join Miles on stage without permission. Miles David won eight grammy Awards throughout his lifetime including A Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, and three Grammy Hall of Fame