The Lady of the Day

"The Golden Age of Jazz"
- photograph by William Gottlieb

My hat goes off to the inventor and poster-child of "The Blues" of Jazz,
or, to my mind, "Hurtin' Songs" of Country Music,
or a "Lenten Psalm" in the old "Negro Spirituals".
She hurt lots,
She wrote about hurt real good and
Sang Hurtin' Songs the best because
She never knew anything else but hurtin'
Her hurtin' voice healed her audience' hearts

Ladies 'n' Gents, I present,
the one, the only ...

The Billie Holiday

My tribute to Billie Holiday is best understood if seen in conjunction with the material on her 'sister sites' ~

"Sing Charisma" or "Beauty Dovetailed into One Venus”
~ my "Idolized Goddess" blog ...
"My claim to fame is that I was born with the planet Venus in Aries like Marilyn Munroe. When Twiggy was a top-model, I had a figure just like hers – she helped me feel less ugly. My Collage of celebrated women who make me feel beautiful when I look at their images. They were either demonized for their 'cautour edge' or dismissed as blonde 'molls', yet each made a paradigm shift in our view of 'Beautiful Woman'."

"Witch-Lynching or Rebels-in-the-Rough?"

~ my "Dethroned Goddess" blog ...
"My mandate for this blog is personal opinion, guesstimating and analysis ~ pure and simple ~ of the subjects, the women, portrayed on my two sister blogs."

The Biography from the Official Web Site of Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday's grandfather was one of 17 children of a black Virginia slave and a white Irish plantation owner. Her mother was only 13 when she was born.

The future "Lady Day" first heard the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith on a Victrola at Alice Dean's, the Baltimore "house of ill repute" where she ran errands and scrubbed floors as a young girl. She made her singing debut in obscure Harlem nightclubs (borrowing her professional name from screen star Billie Dove), then toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw before going solo. Benny Goodman dragged the frightened singer to her first studio session. Between 1933 and 1944, she recorded over 200 "sides," but she never received royalties for any of them.

Despite a lack of technical training, Holiday's unique diction, inimitable phrasing and acute dramatic intensity made her the outstanding jazz singer of her day. White gardenias, worn in her hair, became her trademark.

"Singing songs like the 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck," she wrote in her autobiography. "I've lived songs like that." Her own compositions included "God Bless the Child," espousing the virtues of financial independence and "Don't Explain," lament on infidelity.

Billie Holiday, a musical legend still popular today, died an untimely death at the age of 44.

Billie Holiday Quotes

"Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."

"I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music."

"If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing."

"If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling."

"If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung."

"I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been. "

"I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old."

"Mom & Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three."

"No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music."

"Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck."

"Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough."

"Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose."

"You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation."

"You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music."

"You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave."

Quotes about Billie Holiday

"Billie Holiday's voice was the voice of living intensity of soul in the true sense of that greatly abused word. As a human being she was sweet, sour, kind, mean, generous, profane, lovable and impossible, and nobody who knew her expects to see anyone quite like her again." -Leonard Feather

"She could express more emotion in one chorus than most actresses can in three acts."- Jeanne Moreau

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