Random Unprecedented Rise And Tragic Death Of Billie Holiday (16 items)

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  (#1) She Was Born To A Teenage Mother

  Billie Holiday was born to a teen mom. In 1915, when she was born, her mother Sadie was only 13, and her father was only 15. Billie's given name was Eleanora Fagan, but she gave herself her stage name based on movie star Billie Dove and her father, reportedly jazz musician Clarence Holiday. Unfortunately, her father was rarely around during her childhood and she and her mother had to struggle on their own.
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  (#2) She And Her Mother Lived In A Poor Neighborhood, Where A Neighbor Assaulted Her At The Young Age Of 10

  At the age of nine, Billie was sent to the House of Good Shepard - a reform school for African American girls. She was sent there for being absent from school too often, and was sent back to live with her mother later that year. 

  Sadly, within a year Billie was sexually assaulted by one of her neighbors; she was only 10. For that, she was sent back to reform school.
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  (#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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  (#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.
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  (#5) Newly Released From Prison, She Applied For A Dancing Job At A Club - But Was Instead Hired As A Singer

  After being released from jail, Holiday needed a job. She went to a club called the Log Cabin to apply for a job as a dancer, but it turns out she was applying for the wrong role.

  As she tells it, "Told him I was a dancer. He said to dance. I tried it. He said I stunk. I told him I could sing. He said sing … I sang. The customers stopped drinking." 

  She was hired as a singer for $18 per week, and slowly branched out into performing in other clubs around Harlem.
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  (#6) Touring America In The '30s Meant Dealing With Racism And Segregation

  In the mid-1930s, Billie Holiday became one of the first female Black singers to work with a white orchestra. It was not a widely accepted practice at the time; once, while playing with a Black orchestra, a venue manager insisted that she blacken her light skin so people wouldn't be upset (because they thought a white woman was singing with a Black band).

  She and her band, no matter who she was playing with, often struggled with segregation while on tour. She said later of her touring years that it was difficult to even find a restaurant where her whole band could eat together.
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  (#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."
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  (#8) Her First Husband Introduced Her To Heroin

  Depending on who you ask, Billie's first husband either smoked opium or had a heroin habit. The drugs have their subtle differences, but are very similar substances - and either way, they had the same effect on her life.

  Her husband, Jimmy Monroe, was a fellow musician - a trombone player. With Billie's growing success, she was able to keep both of them supplied with drugs. The marriage lasted less than three years.
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  (#9) The Death Of Her Mother Escalated Her Drug And Alcohol Problems

  The death of her mother, Sadie, in 1945 was a traumatic period in Holiday's life. The pain of her loss drove her even further into the abyss of substance abuse. She had always been a heavy drinker, and had been using heroin for years. Her grief led to the beginning of a steady downward spiral that would hang a cloud over her career for the rest of her life.
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  (#10) She Went To Prison In 1947 For Drug Possesion

  Billie's drug habit had been slowly building up since the early 1940s and came to a breaking point in 1947. She was arrested for possession of narcotics, and requested to be sent to a federal rehabilitation center in Virginia. She stayed for a year and a day, in an attempt to rid herself of the destructive drug habits that were starting to slowly destroy her career.
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  (#11) She Appeared Alongside Her Idol, Louis Armstrong, On The Silver Screen

  In the film New Orleans, which 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.
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  (#12) Her Cabaret Card Was Revoked

  After her arrest and subsequent treatment, Billie returned to New York to perform. There was one thing in the way, however - her "Cabaret Card" had been revoked. Because of the drug conviction, she no longer held the license that allowed her to play in venues that served alcohol. 

  She still played in grand venues like Carnegie Hall and toured throughout Europe, but it was always the nightclubs that she had grown up playing that held her heart.
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  (#13) Her Second Husband Was A Mafia Enforcer

  Holiday married a man named Louis McKay in Mexico in 1957. She had dated several abusive and drug-addicted men before Louis, and he became yet another man in her life that took advantage of her. There were rumors that he was actually a mafia enforcer, and his intention was to use her name to open a recording studio. They remained married until Holiday died only two years later.
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  (#14) She Was Arrested One Last Time - On Her Death Bed In The Hospital

  In 1959, Billie Holiday was admitted to the hospital suffering from liver and heart problems, complications of years of drug use. To add insult to injury, she was actually arrested in her hospital bed for narcotics possession, and was under "bed arrest" for an entire month before she passed away.

  There was a guard outside her room, and all of her flowers and gifts, as well as her record player, were removed. She passed away on July 17th, 1959, at the age of just 44.
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  (#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. 
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  (#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."

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