Billie Holiday
In the nearly 50 years since her death in 1959, vocalist Billie Holiday has become a prisoner of her legend – a legend that to some degree she was complicit in creating. She is considered today not simply an inventive, powerful, and even revolutionary musician, but a tortured victim of the jazz life. Today the public is probably less familiar with her music than it is with the lurid depictions of her story – her 1956 autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, a sensationalistic tome ghost-written by tabloid journalist William Dufty, and the hit like-titled 1972 film starring ex-Supremes lead singer Diana Ross, which is from its first frame a grotesquely melodramatic work of the purest fiction.
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- City Of Origin:
- Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- Genre:
- Jazz, Jazz Vocal
- Birthdate:
- 04/07/1915
- Death date:
- 07/17/1959
