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  • She Appeared At Carnegie Hall More Than Once on Random Unprecedented Rise And Tragic Death Of Billie Holiday

    (#15) She Appeared At Carnegie Hall More Than Once

    Arguably the most famous music venue in the world, Carnegie Hall has a mighty reputation and it is a huge honor to get to perform there even once for any artist. Naturally, Billie being the talent that she was, she performed there many times throughout her career. At her first show there in 1948 she performed before a sold-out crowd and received not one, not two, but three curtain calls.

    She would appear there again in 1956, just a few years before her death, to promote her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. She performed two concerts back to pack before sold-out crowds, which was a huge accomplishment for any artist, but for Billie, as a Black woman during segregation, it was an extra powerful and important moment. 

  • Thumb of One Of Her Iconic Hits Is Easily One Of The Most Haunting Songs In American History video

    (#7) One Of Her Iconic Hits Is Easily One Of The Most Haunting Songs In American History

    The song "Strange Fruit" began as a poem by a Jewish teacher in the Bronx named Abel Meeropol. He wrote it as a protest, after he saw photos of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana. He set the poem to music and began performing it publicly at protests.

    Billie Holiday first performed "Strange Fruit" in 1939. Holiday's label at the time, Columbia, wasn't interested in recording the song, so she recorded it with Commodore Records instead. It became a huge hit, and one of the songs that she was most well-known for. However, she said that some audiences didn't seem to grasp the meaning of the song, requesting "that sexy song about the people swinging."

  • She Worked As A Prostitute For Three Years, Before Being Sent To Jail on Random Unprecedented Rise And Tragic Death Of Billie Holiday

    (#4) She Worked As A Prostitute For Three Years, Before Being Sent To Jail

    In 1928, Billie and her mother moved from Baltimore, MD, to New York City. The transition was not an easy one - soon after moving Billie was raped for the second time in her life, and her attacker spent a mere three months in jail.

    Without much of an education under her belt, Holiday did what she needed to do to survive. She worked as a prostitute and supported herself that way for three years, before eventually being arrested for solicitation and sent to a woman's prison. She would have been around 16 at the time.

  • Her Autobiography Was Made Into A Movie Starring Diana Ross on Random Unprecedented Rise And Tragic Death Of Billie Holiday

    (#16) Her Autobiography Was Made Into A Movie Starring Diana Ross

    In 1972 Lady Sings the Blues premiered, based on Billie's autobiography of the same name. The film starred Diana Ross as Billie Holiday and went on to gross a little over nine million dollars in North America by 1973, which would be just over $50 million in today's money, while its worldwide box office was closer to $112 million in modern terms. It received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress in a Leading Role for Diana Ross, but unfortunately none of the nominations were won. Despite this, Ross received imense praise for her performance, including a glowing review from Roger Ebert,

    "My first reaction when I learned that Diana Rosshad been cast to play Billie Holiday was a quick and simple one: I didn't think she could do it. I knew she could sing, although not as well as Billie Holiday and certainly not in the same way, but I couldn't imagine Diana Ross reaching the emotional highs and lows of one of the more extreme public lives of our time...

    "All of those thoughts were wiped out of my mind within the first three or four minutes of 'Lady Sings the Blues', and I was left with a feeling of complete confidence in a dramatic performance. This was one of the great performances of 1972."

  • She Appeared Alongside Her Idol, Louis Armstrong, On The Silver Screen on Random Unprecedented Rise And Tragic Death Of Billie Holiday

    (#11) She Appeared Alongside Her Idol, Louis Armstrong, On The Silver Screen

    In the film New Orleanswhich premiered in 1947 shortly before Billie went to prison for drug use, the singer got to appear alongside Louis Armstrong. The film was a romantic musical, with Louis and Billie falling in love as characters in romantic musical films are want to do. As much of a coup as this was for Billie, who had loved the idea of getting billed in a film with Armstrong, it was something of a double-edged blade: she was cast as a maid, a role that no doubt lacked the dignity she would have preferred.

  • Her Experiences At Reform School Gave Her Nightmares For Years on Random Unprecedented Rise And Tragic Death Of Billie Holiday

    (#3) Her Experiences At Reform School Gave Her Nightmares For Years

    The House of Good Shepard reform school was known for its harsh punishments, for even the smallest of mistakes or misbehavior. Her experience there was traumatic, and left a lasting impression. It took Holiday a while to move past her horrific time spent there; she would wake up from dreams about the school, screaming, for years after she left.

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Billie Holiday is an American jazz and swing singer with a career of 26 years. She has had an innovative influence on jazz music and popular songs, and she is known for her voice expression and improvisation skills. Unfortunately, the experience of growing up in poverty and years of drug abuse almost destroyed Billie Holiday’s future.

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