Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was born on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia as Eleanora Fagan Goughy. She became known to the world as 'Lady Day'. Much of Holiday's difficult childhood is clouded by conjecture and legend, some of it propagated by herself in her autobiography published in 1956. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, was allegedly only thirteen at the time of her birth; her father Clarence Holiday, was fifteen. Her parents married when she was three, but they soon divorced, leaving her to be raised largely by her mother and other relatives. A hardened and angry child, she dropped out of school at an early age and began working as a prostitute with her mother. This preceded her move to New York with her mother sometime in the early 1930s. Settling in Harlem, Holiday began singing informally in numerous clubs. Around 1932 she was "discovered" by record producer John Hammond. He arranged several sessions for her with Benny Goodman; her first-ever recording was "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" (1933). On November 23, 1934, she performed at the Apollo Theater. Holiday began performing regularly at numerous clubs on 52nd Street in Manhattan. She became one of the first blues singers to break the “color” barrier, appearing with white musicians. Yet, she was still forced to use the back entrance and wait in a dark room before appearing on stage. Once on stage, she was transformed into Lady Day with the white gardenia in her hair. Holiday was a dabbler in recreational drug use for most of her life. Yet, it was heroin that would be her undoing, taking it intravenously from about 1940. Drugs, alcohol, and absuvie relationships marred her success and affected her voice. She was arrested for heroin possession in May 1947 and served eight months in a women’s prison. Her New York City Cabaret Card was subsequently revoked, which kept her from working in clubs there for the remaining 12 years of her life. She toured Europe in 1954 and 1958. On May 31, 1959, she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York, suffering from liver and heart problems where she died from cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959 at the age of 44. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with only $0.70 in the bank and $750 on her person.