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Holiday, Billie
6 articles on Holiday, Billie
Holiday, Billie
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
(b. 7 April 1915, d. 17 July 1959), jazz singer. Billie Holiday revolutionized popular vocals by pioneering new explorations of the expressive capacity of the human voice and a feeling for the deeper dimensions of human experience in song. Widely recognized as the most influential jazz and blues singer of the twentieth century, Holiday brought to the art form an exquisite sense of timing and poignant, emotionally dramatic phrasing that challenged the existing Tin Pan Alleyand big band singer traditions, in which songs were rarely personalized. Although she had a tiny voice, spanning little more than an octave, her unforgettable personal style grew out of her being the first consciously to deploy her voice like a jazz instrument, to create an intimate, conversational tone, and to continually improvise her interpretations. Early influences were Louis “Satchmo” ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 1166 Includes: Bibliography1915–1959
African American jazz singer who greatly influenced the course of American popular singing. Billie Holiday lived two irreconcilably different lives: one as an outstanding Jazz artist, one as the emotionally traumatized victim of abuse. Her singing has inspired generations of musicians, and she is one of the few women—along with Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughan—to have attained the status of jazz legend. Jazz scholars treat her no less seriously than they do Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington. Although Holiday had limited popular appeal during her lifetime, her impact on other singers was profound. In 1958Frank Sinatra cited Holiday as “the greatest single musical influence on me” and “the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.” On the other hand, Holiday's life ...
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Source: African American National Biography
(7 Apr. 1915–17 July 1959), vocalist and lyricist, was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, to a nineteen-year-old domestic worker, Sadie Fagan, and Clarence Holiday, a seventeen-year-old guitarist who would later gain fame as a member of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra.Shortly after giving birth, Sadie Fagan returned to her home in Baltimore with her newborn daughter in tow. During her youth in this gritty, working-class port town, the young Holiday would encounter two things that influenced her for the duration of her life: the criminal justice system and music. By the time she entered Thomas E. Hays Elementary School, Holiday was the stepdaughter of Philip Gough, who had married her mother on 20 October 1920. A tomboy, the future singer enjoyed playing stickball and softball with the boys in the ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
(b. 7 April 1915 ; d. 17 July 1959 ),
jazz singer. Billie Holiday never won a jazz popularity poll during her lifetime. Readers of Metronome, Melody Maker, and Down Beat magazines consistently chose Holiday second, third, even tenth after Ella Fitzgerald , Mildred Bailey , Helen O'Connell , and Jo Stafford , all of whom, with the exception of Fitzgerald, were white, and all of whom sang with commercially popular big bands.Among jazz critics and historians, however, there is little question that Billie Holiday was the greatest jazz singer ever recorded. Coming into her own a generation after classic blues singers like Bessie ...
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Source: American National Biography Online
Word Count: 2667 Includes: Bibliographysinger, was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Clarence Holiday, a musician, and Sadie Fagan. Her parents probably never married, and shortly after Holiday’s birth her father left to pursue his career as a jazz guitarist and her mother moved back to Baltimore, where Holiday spent the early years of her childhood. When her mother moved north in search of work, Holiday remained behind, cared for by relatives. She later wrote of the beatings and unhappiness she endured during these years and of being raped as a ten year old, but some scholars question the reliability of ...
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Source: The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
Word Count: 447(1915–1959), jazz singer and lyricist. Like many jazz musicians, Billie Holiday (“Lady Day”) began her career in brothels and after-hours clubs. After an apprenticeship at late-night jam sessions, she became one of the most significant figures in the history of jazz. Since her death she has become an American icon, perhaps better known for the stories surrounding her drug addiction and her personal life than for her artistry.Her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues (1956), coauthored with William Dufty, has become a classic African American autobiography. The text is one of the first to contribute to the myth of Holiday as the tortured but talented jazz and pop singer. The myth is elaborated on the pages of the autobiographies of some of the twentieth century's most significant African Americans including ...
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