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Billie Holiday music biography continued...

Pennsylvania, Billie Holiday was the product of a broken home, and found solace in music from a young age. She followed her mother who had moved to New York City in the late 1920s and worked in a house of prostitution in Harlem for a time. Around 1930, Holiday began singing in local clubs and renamed herself "Billie" after the film star Billie Dove. At the age of 18, Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond while she was performing in a Harlem jazz club. She would go on to record and perform with the Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Count Bassie Orchestras, and then struck out on her own, recording two of her greatest hits—"God Bless the Child" and "Strange Fruit" (1939). She later signed with Decca Records in 1944 and scored an R&B hit the next year with "Lover Man." Her boyfriend at the time was trumpeter Joe Guy, and with him she started using heroin. After the death of her mother in October 1945, Holiday began drinking more heavily and escalated her drug use to ease her grief. Despite her drug abuse and other personal problems with the various men in her life Holiday remained a genuine jazz star—selling out Carnegie Hall in New York City soon after she was released from a drug rehabilitation facility in 1947. Lady Day, as she was called, seemed to have the whole world in her hands.



While her hard living was taking a toll on her voice, Holiday continued to tour and record in the 1950s. She began recording for Norman Granz, the owner of several small jazz labels, in 1952. Two years later, Holiday had a hugely successful tour of Europe. Back in the States, she took up with another man who was wrapped up in narcotics. A period of spiraling drug abuse and poor sales for her recordings followed, and Holiday gave her last performance in New York City on May 25, 1959. On July 17, 1959, Holiday died in a New York hospital from alcohol- and drug-related complications. More than 3,000 people showed up for her funeral, which was a moving tribute to a jazz great.