BILLIE HOLIDAY ("LADY DAY")
             4/7/1915 - 7/17/1959

Considered by many to be the greatest jazz vocalist of all time, Billie Holiday lived a tempestuous and difficult life. Her singing expressed an incredible depth of emotion that spoke of hard times and injustice as well as triumph. Though her career was relatively short and often erratic, she left behind a body of work as great as any vocalist before or since.

Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever."

She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz
standards, notably "God Bless the Child". Other songs associated with Billie include: "Don't  Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady  Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing "Easy Living", "Good  Morning Heartache", and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards  and was made famous with her 1939 recording. Her signature tune was "God Bless The Child", and no one since has sung it any better.

SOME OF LADY DAY'S MOST BRILLIANT PERFORMANCES

Today, Billie Holiday is revered beyond her wildest imaginings
in places which, in her lifetime, greeted her with painfully closed doors.  Sadly, she would not have been surprised. As she wrote in her autobiography,  "There's no damn business like show business. You had to smile to keep from throwing up." Any new student coming to popular music or jazz will at some point be directed to the work of Billie Holiday. Unquestionably, they will be  moved and, quite certainly, they will be amazed.

Considered one of the best jazz vocalists of all time, Holiday has been an influence on many other performers who have followed in her footsteps. Her autobiography was made into the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues with famed  singer Diana Ross playing the part of Holiday. This helped renew interest in Holiday's recordings. In 2000, Billie Holiday was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Diana Ross handling the honors.

                    Honors

• 1987, Billie Holiday was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 1993, R&B singer Miki Howard released an album dedicated to Holiday titled Miki Sings Billie.
• 1994, the United States Postal Service introduced a Billie Holiday postage stamp.
• 1999, Holiday ranked #6 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock n' Roll.
• 2000, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Over the years, there have been many tributes to Billie Holiday, including "The Day Lady Died," a 1959 poem by Frank O'Hara.

• In 1988 the group U2 released "Angel of Harlem" in her honor.
• Arthur Phillips features Holiday's 1953 concert in New York in his novel The Song is You (2009).

              IN TRIBUTE

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT BILLIE'S OWN WEBSITE WWW.BILLIEHOLIDAY.COM

(special thanks to Susan Schoeffield for her input and suggestions)