Billie Holiday
American jazz singer (1915-1959) · United States · Musicians · Died at 44
Billie Holiday is read about 2,643 times a day, in 78 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
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Something wrong?She bent phrasing and tempo the way horn players did, treating her voice as an instrument and rewriting the rules for pop singing. "Lady Day" turned jazz standards into something rawer and more personal, and the world hasn't stopped listening.
A life in dates
All or Nothing at AllAlbum, 19591958
Lady in SatinAlbum1957
Body and SoulAlbum1956“It takes a bad woman to be a good godmother.”In their wordsRemark made to Rosemary Clooney, c. summer 1956, regarding Holiday's qualifications to serve as godmother to Clooney's second child, as“No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.”In their wordsCh. 4.“I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.”In their wordsCh. 4.“You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”In their wordsCh. 11.Jazz RecitalAlbum1915Born7 April 1915Also in Deutsch
Photos 10
Holiday, aged two, in 1917
Holiday and her dog Mister, New York, c. 1946
Mug shot of Holiday after being arrested in 1947![Holiday at the Downbeat Jazz Club, New York,[82] c. February 1947](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Billie_Holiday%2C_Downbeat%2C_New_York%2C_N.Y.%2C_ca._Feb._1947_%28William_P._Gottlieb_04251%29.jpg/1280px-Billie_Holiday%2C_Downbeat%2C_New_York%2C_N.Y.%2C_ca._Feb._1947_%28William_P._Gottlieb_04251%29.jpg)
Holiday at the Downbeat Jazz Club, New York,[82] c. February 1947
Holiday in court over a contract dispute, late 1949
Holiday performing at the Storyville club, Boston, on October 29, 1955In their own words 10
, It takes a bad woman to be a good godmother.
No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.
I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.
Listen
SpotifyOn YouTube
212K subscribersAlbums 24
MBMisty & Blue
LDLady Day
BPBillie Holiday: Star PowerBSBillie Holiday at Storyville
AAAll or Nothing at All
SLSongs for Distingué Lovers
SMStay With Me
TBThe Blues Are Brewin'
VMVelvet MoodAwards
Family
Billie HolidayPartners
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Born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, Holiday survived a turbulent childhood and began singing in Harlem nightclubs, where producer John Hammond heard her and got her signed to Brunswick in 1935. Her collaboration with Teddy Wilson produced "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", a hit that became a jazz standard, and through the 1930s and 1940s she had mainstream success on Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s legal troubles and drug abuse landed her in prison, but she walked out to a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert and kept performing through the 1950s with two more sold-out Carnegie shows. Her voice had changed, her final recordings drew mixed reaction, and Lady in Satin arrived in 1958. She died of cirrhosis and heart failure in July 1959 at 44, leaving four posthumous Grammys and a permanent seat in the canon - fourth on Rolling Stone's greatest singers list, an early Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, the voice NPR named among the fifty greatest ever.
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