Billie Holiday

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Billie Holiday Biography

Personal

Died: Wednesday 17th of June 1970 (age 0)

Born: Tuesday 7th of April 1970

Years active: 1935-1958 (23 years active)

Birthplace: Philidelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Nationality: (American)

Ethnicity: Black

Sexuality: Bisexual

Body

Hair color: Brown

Eye color: Brown

Height: 5'5" (or 165 cm)

Weight: 163 lbs (or 74 kg)

Body type: Chubby

Boobs: Real/Natural

About Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing music singer; a legend in the chronicles of jazz, music, and black history. She was nicknamed "Lady Day" by friend and music partner, Lester Young. Her vocal style is renowned for its uniqueness; low, syrupy, and most recognizable in the way she manipulated phrasing and tempo. Vocal delivery and improvisation were her hallmark skills.

Following a turbulent childhood, Billie began singing in nightclubs in Harlem. At this time, producer John Hammond noticed her, and took a liking to her voice. She signed onto a record contract with Brunswick in the year 1935.

Billie collaborated with Teddy Wilson, and together, they produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which later grew to be a jazz standard.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Billie had widespread success on labels like Columbia and Decca.

However by the late 1940s, she struggles with legal troubles and drug abuse.

She served a short prison sentence, then went on to perform a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall.

She was successful in her concert performances throughout the 1950s, with an additional two sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall.

Her final recordings were received with mixed review due to her personal struggles and altered voice, yet were lukewarm commercial successes. Lady in Satin, her final album, was released in 1958. She died of heart failure the following year; July 17, 1959, at only 44 years old.

After her death, Billie won four Grammy Awards for best historical album. She was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, then the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 as an early influence, dubbed one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR and, ranked fourth on the Rolling Stone list of "200 Greatest Singers of All Time" in 2023.

There have been several movies made based on her life, the most recent being The United States vs. Billie Holiday from 2021. She is credited as a genius and pioneer of her time, as well as being seen as a tragic figure for the hardships she endured during her life. She is also a beloved icon in queer history, being unapologetically bisexual herself.

Billie Holiday's parents were an unmarried teenage couple, Clarence Halliday and Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan respectively. Billie's given birth name was Eleanora Fagan. Sadie gave birth to her on April 7th 1915 in Philadelphia. She had moved to Philadelphia when she was 19, after being evicted from her parents' home in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, for her pregnancy.

In the absence of support from her parents, she had made arrangements with her older, married half-sister, Eva Miller, for Holiday to stay with her in Baltimore. Soon after Billie was born, Clarence abandoned the family in pursuit of a career as a jazz banjo player and guitarist.

There is historical dispute over Billie's paternity; a copy of her birth certificate from the Baltimore archives claims her father is one "Frank DeViese". Other historians consider it uncertain, probably penned by a hospital or government worker.

Frank DeViese did live in Philadelphia, and it is supposed that Sadie may have met him through work. She had married Philip Gough in the year 1920, though it was short lived.

Billie grew up in Baltimore, surviving a difficult childhood. Sadie frequently transportation jobs and served on passenger railroads.

Billie was raised mostly by Eva Miller's mother in law, Martha Miller. She weathered her mother's absences and poverty, in care of others for the first ten years of her life. She often skipped school, and as a result, was sent to a strict reformatory school, The House of the Good Shepard. The conditions of the school traumatized her. The nuns once locked her in a room with the corpse of a dead girl overnight. Billie went on to have nightmares about the school from which she would wake up screaming for years.

After nine months, she was released into the care of her mother, who had opened a restaurant called the East Side Grill, at which they both worked long hours.

She was raped at ten years old by an unnamed assailant. She fought back against her attacker, who was jailed thereafter, but Billie was sent back to the House of The Good Shepard, accused of 'seducing' her rapist.

She dropped out of school at age eleven, and was released from the school.

Billie spent some time thereafter running errands and doing chores at a local brothel, as well as occasionally doing sex work to survive. It is around this time that Billie first heard Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith records, two artists that would greatly influence her future style.