She died at 3.10 am on Friday 17 July 1959 at the Metropolitan Hospital, New York. She was 44. Few singers fit the paradigm of the tortured artist as well as Billie Holiday. Born into absolute poverty and a broken home, she slowly worked her way up to stardom through sheer personal determination, only to fall into a spiral of addiction and die an early death of cirrhosis – 70 cents left in her bank account.
The toughness of her childhood cannot possibly be overstated: one day her neighbour went to her house to rape her, at this time an 11-year-old girl, only to be saved by her mother who came home and helped fight him off. That hardship permeates a great many of her songs. To me, she will always be the greatest pop singer of the 20th century: few peers to her supreme artistry among all singers. But what made her so great?
A superb actor. Charles Laughton would play her records to teach the technique of inflection – if you don't know Charles Laughton, then know that he was a very great actor. For every word, she had a hundred different ways of singing it; in Everything Happens to Me she inflects 'party' with a certain eloquent grandeur, and then goes on to repeat the title as if it were all a sigh. Listening to Holiday, you're struck how there's no limit to the vibrancy, strength and originality of her every syllable.
She had a way of choosing the most innocuous songs and taking them from a certain benign mediocrity to a divinity, often supported by exceptional players. Lester Young and Ben Webster can be heard tooting away in the background on many of her recordings, but the full list of fine players would fill a fair few pages.
Her classic Strange Fruit, a song about lynchings in the American South, grew to be the embodiment of the civil rights movement. She feared for her safety when singing it, but would continue in memory of her father – a war veteran who died a needless death in a crude Jim Crow ward. Many labels refused to release it for fear of reprisals, until a producer as brave as Holiday stepped up to that mantle.
Bold individuality, masterful acting and fine taste for material and collaborators make fine qualities for any singer. Were every soprano to hold those self-same virtues, I dare say the royal stage would be a paradise. Time, then, to go and impart them upon your unwitting students.
Self-portrait by Noah
