Everyday Black History: Billie Holiday

From An Accident Comes a Legend

Billie Holiday ca. 1933

Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore on April 7, 1915, the illegitimate child of Sadie Fagan, a domestic and Clarence Holiday, a musician who abandoned Sadie and the young Eleanora for the grind and glory of the road. It is said that he referred to his adoring daughter as an “accident” and “something I stole when I was fifteen.” Young Eleanora stayed with relatives in Baltimore while her mother labored as a domestic in New York City.  The girl spent a good portion of her time at a neighborhood brothel where she would spend hours listening to the music of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong on its Victrola. After almost being raped at the tender age of 10, Eleanora was sent away to an institution ran by Catholic nuns as punishment for allegedly enticing the man who almost stole what little innocence she had. 

'Lady Day' ca. late 1930s

An Extraordinary Career Begins

When she was 18 in 1933, Eleanora Fagan became Billie Holiday and made her first recordings for Columbia Records.  John Hammond, the legendary record producer who first signed her said that Billie “sang popular songs in a manner that made them completely her own. She was absolutely beautiful . . . She was the best jazz singer I had ever heard.”  By the age of 15, Eleanora had joined her mother in New York. She worked first as a maid and then as a prostitute until meeting her natural calling as a singer in small Harlem nightclubs.

Strange Fruit

Billie worked with an impressive list of the most prominent musicians of her time, including Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Fletcher Henderson, Arte Shaw, Count Basie and good friend Lester Young, who gave her the nickname “Lady Day.” In 1935, Billie made her debut at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, THE place for black entertainers and where she became one of its most popular attractions. In 1939, she recorded “Strange Fruit,”its title referring to lynched black bodies hanging from the limbs of trees.  Billie once said “There are a few songs I feel so much, I can’t stand to sing them, but that’s something else again.” Doubtless, “Strange Fruit” was one of those songs, but it was the one which solidified her career. According to Apollo Theatre owner Jack Schiffman, who objected to the song’s inclusion said that when she finished, “a moment of oppressively heavy silence followed, and then a kind of rustling sound I had never heard before. It was the sound of almost two thousand people sighing.”

The End of an Era

Billie Holiday ca. 1940s

The career of Lady Day was extraordinary -- there were amazing highs and tragic lows, all well-documented. In 1959, after addictions to both alcohol and drugs, Billie Holiday died of lung congestion and other ailments in New York’s Metropolitan Hospital. Billie's storied life was depicted on screen in Lady Sings the Blues, released in 1972 and starring Diana Ross, whose portrayal of ‘Lady Day’ won for the singer/actress both critical acclaim and a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Diana Ross as 'Lady Day'