Billie Holiday.

Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday (1915-1959), one of the greatest jazz singers of all time. Also known as Lady Day, she cast an almost magical spell over audiences with her ability to find the emotional core of a song. Born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of jazz guitarist Clarence Holiday, but they had no contact during her upbringing. She spent an impoverished childhood in Baltimore before she moved with her mother to New York City in the late 1920s. There, she began singing in Harlem nightclubs and took the name Billie. A recording session in 1935 brought her to public attention. Thereafter she was vocalist with various big bands, including those of Count Basie and Artie Shaw, and made many recordings with saxophonist Lester Young and with pianist Teddy Wilson. Young nicknamed her Lady Day. Holiday reinterpreted popular melodies with great freedom, particularly through her ever-varied manner of stretching and compressing rhythmic details in relation to the beat. Her voice had a unique, unforgettable, piercingly emotional tone quality, and this special sound, together with her blues-inflected delivery, brought profound depth and meaning to whatever she sang, however uncomplicated the lyrics may have seemed. Examples include "These Foolish Things" (1936), "He's Funny That Way" (1937), "Them There Eyes" (1939), "Strange Fruit" (1939), and "All of Me" (1941). By 1941, when Holiday recorded "God Bless the Child" and "Georgia on My Mind," the undertone of sprightly good humor had largely departed from her performances, and she focused more and more on gloomy tempos. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Holiday appeared in clubs around the United States, although racial discrimination made touring difficult. She experienced a succession of disastrous personal relationships, and by the 1950s her voice increasingly showed the effects of alcoholism and long-term heroin addiction. She died in New York City. Holiday rarely sang traditional blues, but her reputation rests on her ability to transform popular songs into emotionally profound pieces. Holiday's book Lady Sings the Blues (1956) inspired a 1972 movie of the same name. Singer Diana Ross played the title role. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.