Billie Holiday, whose real name is Eleanora Gough, was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1915. She grew up mostly in Baltimore and always loved jazz. Billie was born to very young parents. Her mother was thirteen when she was born and her father just fifteen. (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)
Her father made his living as a jazz musician and later he left Billie’s mother. Billie was raised by her mother and grandparents. Billie was not a happy child and eventually left school at an early age. It was rumored that she became a prostitute like her mother. (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)
Her relationship with her father was not a loving one. Clarence Holiday was hardly ever around. Sometimes Billie would blackmail him for money by threatening to tell his new girlfriend that she was his daughter. (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)
Later, while living in Harlem and singing in clubs Billie was discovered by John Hammond. She later recorded the song “Your Mother’s Son-In-Law” around 1933. She also sang at the Apollo theater in 1934 and first received acknowledgement as a great live performer. At the time Bobby Henderson was her then lover and played the piano during her performance. Billie went on to perform in other clubs in Manhattan. (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)
Later in her career Billie Holiday became one of the first black performers to work with white performers of her time. She was still subjected to the racial barriers of her time like waiting in a dark room until it was time for her to perform and using the back entrances to perform. Billie was quoted once for having been said, “I’ve lived songs like that.” (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)
Billie had a lot of soul and gut wrenching emotion in both her ...
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...is will lead her to open up about buried hurt and anger. I think that much of her anger is directed at her father because he abandoned her and later was afraid to acknowledge her as his daughter to girlfriends.
Then I would suggest both drug and alcohol rehabilitation with therapy that would discuss the cause of each. I would also throw in some education on the affects of long term drug and alcohol abuse. It would be my hope that as therapy and treatment continued Billie’s father would be willing to sit down in a session with her that would allow her to confront him. Based on his continued failure of her as a father I don’t see that happening and therefore little hope that Billie’s road to recovery will be successful. Also, I feel that Billie would benefit from the use of anti-depressants to deal with the emotions and depression related to childhood trauma.
“Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday conveys the inhumane, gory lynchings of African-Americans in the American South, and how this highly unnatural act had entrenched itself into the society and culture of the South, almost as if it were an agricultural crop. Although the song did not originate from Holiday, her first performance of it in 1939 in New York City and successive recording of the song became highly popular for their emotional power (“Strange fruit,” 2017). The lyrics in the song highlight the contrast between the natural beauty and apparent sophistication of the agricultural South with the brutal violence of lynchings. Holiday communicates these rather disturbing lyrics through a peculiarly serene vocal delivery, accompanied by a hymn-like
Ros married her first husband, Robert Ellis Siberstein, a union that produced two children, Tracee (from girlfriends) and Chudney Ellis. In 1972 Diana Ross made her first debut portraying the late jazz singer Billie holiday in “ lady sings the blues”. The film was successful, and Ross was received an Oscar nomination for her performance.
Ethel Waters overcame a very tough childhood to become one of the most well-known African American entertainers of her time. Her story, The Eye on the Sparrow, goes into great detail about her life and how she evolved from taking care of addicts to becoming the star of her own show. Ethel was born to her mother, being raped at a young age. Her father, John Waters, was a pianist who played no role in Ethel’s life. She was raised in poverty and it was rare for her to live in the same place for over a year.
Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz artist and artist musician with a vocation traversing almost thirty years. Nicknamed "Woman Day" by her companion and music accomplice Lester Young, Holiday affected jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, firmly propelled by jazz instrumentalists, spearheaded another method for controlling stating and rhythm. She was known for her vocal conveyance and improvisational aptitudes, which compensated for her restricted range and absence of formal music instruction. There were other jazz vocalists with equivalent ability, however Holiday had a voice that caught the consideration of her crowd.
In 1933 Billie audition as a dancer when she was 18, but the judges said she was not good enough so they asked her if she could sing-she could. In 1939 Billy sang at a café called Café Society and the song was “Strange Fruit”. Holiday wanted the song to be recorded but it was forbidden because it was “too inflammatory” Strange Fruit is a song about racism. She did not want to sing it on many radio stations because they banned all the intense words in the song. She could have been killed by the Koo Klucks Klan if she sang that song. Promoters objected Billie Holiday because of her race. The style of her voice-often tries to sound like a horn instrument because she likes the sliding sound. She refused to sing like other singers. Billie slyly said on a radio interview,”I always wanted to sound like an instrument.” She changed her name to Billie Holiday because her favorite film star, Billie Dove. In 1944 Billie Holiday received the Esquire Magazine Gold Award for Best Leading Female Vocalist. She would then receive some more awards in the following years to come. She got the nickname “Lady Day”. She was discovered by John Hammond, a young producer at Monette’s, a Harlem night club. When he heard Billie’s voice he was
Intervention options include trauma focused substance abuse treatment and parenting with children present. Barriers to this plan include financial issues, maslows hierarchy of needs, if she is unable to keep housing then she will not be able to address psychological well-being. May need a mezzo intervention to ensure. Macro intervention to affordability and transportation etc. Affordability of quality care and transportation/price to travel. Progress will be evaluated through her maintained sobriety, and tracking of skills through the parenting program as well as a parenting stress index, scl 90-r, and
I have first hand seen the childish ways of a drug abusing parent and my overall standpoint is everyone has a weakness, you just need to find a light to bring you out of the dark hole which the monster and sends you down and see what's worth living for. “I believe if you want to write a memoir, you have to tell the entire truth (yes, I understand it will be colored by your personal lenses), and that means truly opening yourself and those around you to public inspection” (Par. 15) said Ellen Hopkins displaying that she takes informing teens as a serious role. A prediction i could infer based upon the parallel relationship between Kristina and her father is if her son is exposed to drugs he will most likely fall in the same path if her she does not tell him the danger of these substances. This novel is a great tool to get the word out there that hard drugs will hurt you, hurt your family and make you a whole new
June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California Norma Jeane Mortenson was born. She never knew her father and her mother is Gladys Baker, Gladys has psychiatric problems and was placed into a mental institution. One of Monroe's earliest memories of her mother is Gladys trying to smother her with a pillow in her crib (“Marilyn Monroe.”). As she grew up, she spent most of her time in eleven foster homes and one orphanage. (“18 Things...Monroe.”). Until she was seven she was in foster homes until her mother got her back but soon after her mother was declared insane and had to go to a psychiatric hospital (Bradshaw, Lauren). While Monroe was in foster homes she was sexually
After her divorce she began singing with Noble Sissie’s Society Orchestra. Through out their tour she had to endure harsh racism having to sleep in tenement boarding houses, the bus and even once in circus grounds. Soon after that, she toured with Charlie Barnet’s Outfit and became the first African American to tour with an all white band. She was their feature singer and considers this to be the beginning of her success.
Singer/actress Lena Horne's primary occupation was nightclub entertaining, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s to the 1990s. In conjunction with her club work, she also maintained a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television. Adding to the challenge of maintaining such a career was her position as an African-American facing discrimination personally and in her profession during a period of enormous social change in the U.S. Her first job in the 1930s was at the Cotton Club, where blacks could perform, but not be admitted as customers; by 1969, when she acted in the film Death of a Gunfighter, her character's marriage to a white man went unremarked in the script. Horne herself was a pivotal figure in the changing attitudes about race in the 20th century; her middle-class upbringing and musical training predisposed her to the popular music of her day, rather than the blues and jazz genres more commonly associated with African-Americans, and her photogenic looks were sufficiently close to Caucasian that frequently she was encouraged to try to "pass" for white, something she consistently refused to do. But her position in the middle of a social struggle enabled her to become a leader in that struggle, speaking out in favor of racial integration and raising money for civil rights causes. By the end of the century, she could look back at a life that was never short on conflict, but that could be seen ultimately as a triumph.
Aretha was born into a family that attended a Baptist church, with her father named, C.L Franklin, who was a Baptist preacher and gospel singer. Her mother was also a gospel singer and somehow there came to be reports that her mother had abandoned Aretha and her siblings, but she claims it to be all a lie (“CNN”). She was the fourth of five children, and lost her mother in 1952, a few years after her parents had gotten divorced.
Josephine Baker Josephine Baker was an African American woman who had to overcome discrimination and abuse in achieving her dream of becoming a singer and dancer. She did this during the 1920s, when African Americans faced great discrimination. She had a hard childhood. Her personal life was not easy to handle. Furthermore, she overcame poverty and racism to achieve her career dream.
Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday were both prominent jazz singer-songwriters during the same time and masters in their own right, but their worlds could not have been further apart. In 1939, while they were both in the midst of experiencing mainstream success, Ella was touring with Ella and her Famous Orchestra and showcasing her perfect pitch and tone to the world while singing songs that would soon become standards to fellow singers and musicians. Billie was singing solo, comfortable with her limited range, and gaining the adoration of audiences nationwide who loved her soulful voice. Both of these historic singers made contributions to the art of jazz, with vocalists and instrumentalists still using elements of their style today. Ella
The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as “Lady Day” or “Lady”, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does it’s very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography.
Bessie Smith impacted Billie Holiday because Holiday learned a lot through Smith’s records by thinking that Smith was kind of a teacher. Even though Billie Holiday did not have a voice as powerful as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday’s musical interpretations and phrasing were similar to Bessie Smith. Frank Sinatra was impacted by Bessie Smith because he believed that she was an early blues genius. Sinatra’s voice was more polished than Smith’s voice, but he did find inspiration in the emotions she sang with in the records. Bessie Smith was a highly influential artist that had the power to help people with their music even after her death proving that she truly is “The Empress of Blues” ("Bessie Smith"