Today I would like to talk about a singer that I really like, her given name was Eleanora Fagan, but known in the musical environment as Billie Holiday, she was born in Philadelphia -Pennsylvania- on April 7, 1915, she grew up in Fells Point, a neighborhood of Baltimore. Billie’s parents never got married, so her father had no problem abandoning them when she was still a baby.

Her mother, too young for so much responsibility, frequently abandoned the girl, leaving her in the hands of relatives who did not have a very good reputation.

At the age of ten, she Billie was sent to a Catholic school, after being raped. Although she should have been in school until she reached adulthood, a family friend helped her run away from her two years after her.

Between 1930-1931, Billie Holiday was already singing frequently in various clubs in New York. In this way, her popularity began to build, in 1933 when producer John Hammond spoke of her publicly in her press column, and subsequently brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances.

Billie joined a small group of musicians led by Benny Goodman to achieve her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with the song “Your Mother’s Son-In-Law.”

She made her first studio recordings on the Columbia label, until 1933, before continuing for a year with Brunswick in 1935. Throughout these early years she recorded with some of the greatest musicians in jazz history.

On November 23, 1934, she sang at the Apollo Theater, a performance which received very good reviews. Her presentation with the pianist and later her lover, Bobby Henderson, had great relevance when it came to consolidating her prestige as a jazz and blues singer.

Between the years of 1937 and 1940, Holiday would alternate between the Brunswick and Vocalion labels, recording important standards such as “My Last Affair (This Is)” (1937), “I Can’t Get Started” (1938) and “Night and Day”. (1940); In addition, it would premiere future hits of her career such as “Strange Fruit” (1939), or “Fine and Mellow” as one of her own compositions, as well as other lesser-known ones, “Everything Happens for the Best” (1939 ).

Billie Holiday would begin to sing at the end of 1938 in the New York nightclub Café Society together with the pianist Sonny White, which led to the premiere of minor works and lesser-known standards, as well as atypical instrumental arrangements: Brunswick 8259 and Vocalion 4783.

Holiday had a limited range, only one octave. She makes up for that difficulty with a relentless rhythmic sense, subtle expression, and emotional immediacy.

She had a problem with addiction to psychoactive drugs, although she never knew for sure, using them for almost her entire life.

However, it was her heroin that destroyed her. It is not clear who introduced Holiday to the world of drugs, but historians and contemporary sources agree that she began abusive intravenous use around 1940.

This affected both her voice and subsequent recordings of her: her youthful spirit was replaced by a tinge of remorse, which, despite everything, undoubtedly impacted other artists. Even after her death, she had an influence on singers.

In 1972, Diana Ross acted in the film Lady Sings the Blues, based on Holiday’s autobiographical work. The film was a commercial success as well as earning Ross a best actress nomination.

The last recordings of her on Verve are remembered as the Commodore and Decca recordings of twenty years ago. Several of her songs, such as “God Bless the Child”, “I love you Porgy” or “Fine and mellow” have managed to become jazz classics.

In 1958 Lady in Satin was published, her best known work and penultimate album of hers that she managed to complete and publish in her lifetime. The recorded tracks are all major jazz standards, arranged for orchestra, in contrast to the tiny quintessential jazz ensembles.

At the end of May 1959, she was hospitalized for liver pain and heart problems. She was the victim of a scam on her earnings and she died with only $0.70 in the bank and $750 in cash.

She is currently considered one of the three most important and influential female voices in this musical genre, along with Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.

The jazz lady did not have a perfect life, because for many they consider her life a tragic movie, since she was involved in sexual abuse and drugs that forged her with a tough character.

But everything changed when she went on stage, Billie Holiday permeates her songs with an unmatched intensity that, in many cases, was the result of the transfer of her own experiences to the lyrics she sang.

So all this was not an impediment for her voice to rise above her, making her one of the best singers of the 20th century.