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Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter.

Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter.

Nicknamed Lady Day^[1] by her sometime collaborator Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style — strongly inspired by instrumentalists — pioneered a new way of manipulating wording and tempo, and also popularized a more personal and intimate approach to singing. Critic John Bush wrote that she "changed the art of American pop vocals forever."^[2] She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", and "Lady Sings the Blues".

[edit] Discography

Holiday recorded extensively for four labels:

• Columbia Records (1933-1942, 1958) [ Brunswick Records (1935-1939), Vocalion Records (later OKeh Records) (1936-1942)]
• Commodore Records (1939, 1944)
• Decca Records (1944-1950)
• Verve Records (1952-1959)

[edit] Studio recordings

Note: To avoid repetition (and a very long discography) most of Holiday's individual albums are omitted, as almost all the material from these albums is available on the box sets listed below.

[edit] Box sets

• Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944, Columbia Legacy CXK85470, 2001
• The Complete Commodore Recordings (1939, 1944)
• The Complete Decca Recordings (1944-1950)
• The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve (1945-1959)

[edit] Studio albums

• Lady in Satin (Columbia, 1958)
• New Orleans: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1946) (Giants of Jazz, 1983)
• The Sound of Jazz (Columbia, 1958)

[edit] Live recordings

Many live recordings, of varying quality, are also available. A selection is listed below:

• At Monterey 1958 (1958)
• Billie Holiday in Europe 1954-1958 (1954-1958)
• The Complete 1951 Storyville Club Sessions (1951)
• Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday at Newport (1957) (Holiday's performance is included in the Verve box set; see below)
• Lady Day: The Storyville Concerts [Vol. 1 and 2] (1951, 1953, 1959)
• A Midsummer Night's Jazz at Stratford '57 (1957)
• Summer of '49 (1948-1949)

The Columbia box set includes live recordings of Holiday's performances with the Count Basie Orchestra (1937) and Benny Goodman (1939), and her performance at the 1944 Esquire Jazz Concert.

The Verve box set includes the following live recordings:

• Jazz at the Philharmonic performances (1945-1947)
• Jazz Club USA (1954)
• 1956 Carnegie Hall concerts, with a narrator reading portions of her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues
• 1957 Newport Jazz Festival
• Seven Ages of Jazz Festival (1958)

[edit] Videography

• Symphony in Black, 1935 short (with Duke Ellington)
• New Orleans, 1947
• The Sound of Jazz, CBS Television, December 8, 1957

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Jack Millar, Fine and Mellow: A Discography of Billie Holiday, 1994, ISBN 1-899161-00-7
• Julia Blackburn, With Billie, ISBN 0-375-40610-7
• John Chilton, Billie's Blues: The Billie Holiday Story 1933-1959, ISBN 0-306-80363-1
• Donald Clarke, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, ISBN 0-306-81136-7
• Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, ISBN 0-679-77126-3
• Leslie Gourse, The Billie Holiday Companion: Seven Decades of Commentary, ISBN 0-02-864613-4
• Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can't Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, ISBN 0-684-86808-3
• Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, ISBN 0-14-006762-0
• Chris Ingham, Billie Holiday, ISBN 1-56649-170-3
• Burnett James, Billie Holiday, ISBN 0-946771-05-7
• Stuart Nicholson, Billie Holiday, ISBN 1-55553-303-5
• Robert O'Meally, "Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday", ISBN 1-55970-147-1

[edit] External links

• Official Site
• Official Billie Holiday @ Sony BMG
• Billie Holiday Discography
• Complete Billie Holiday Discography
• Billie Holiday's Music - Pure Vintage
• Brief biography at Jazz (PBS)
• Brief biography at American Masters (PBS)
• The African American Registry - Billie Holiday
• "Essential Billie Holiday Recordings" by Stuart Nicholson, Jazz.com.
• Billie Holiday Timeline
• Billie Holiday's Gravesite
• Billie Holiday’s Small Band Recordings of 1935-1939
• Billie Holiday Multimedia Directory