Billie Holiday Research Paper

It was no wonder why Billie Holiday was considered to be the woman of jazz, her sweet velvet voice carried the crowd. With hits like strange fruit that told a darker story it was easy to see where her passion came from. She told stories in her music and people across the nation were more than willing to sit down and listen to what she had to say. Billie Holiday was an icon of her time and there was not a person who listened to jazz that could say they did not know her name. Her voice was smooth with a hint of seduction that had her audiences reeling. However, things were not always so glamourous. Eleanora Fagan Gough was born on April 7th, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eleanora grew up in Baltimore in the 1920s and during time that

Her name change was based off her lover for Billie dove, a film star, and she became known in the clubs she performed at as Lady Day. Together she came up with the idea of Billie Holliday and that would stick to be her professional stage name for the rest of her career. Billie made her debut in Harlem nightclubs and she took off. With no technical training and no knowledge of reading music it was astonishing how talented this woman was. She moved around the jazz scene, club after club, collecting tips. When she was 18 Billie Holiday was seen by John Hammond who worked with Benny Goodman. Then in 1935 her career she recorded tracks that became hits and this lead her to get her won recording contract. Then, in 1942 she recorded a number of tracks that would help build early American Jazz

She was also one of the first black women to work with an all-white orchestra which was impressive considering the time. Holiday began to work with Columbia records and was introduced the poem, “Strange Fruit.” The record label would not record this track because of the content but that did not stop Billie. She found an alternative record label that would record the track which became one her most known songs. Billie went on to record around 100 tracks with Verve during 1952 to 1959. Her voice transformed into a raw and vulnerable which added a new found soul into her later tracks. During this period she toured Europe and made her final recordings with MGM in 1959. Billie Holiday went on musical journey that most musicians would kill for but, not all of it was