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The jazz singer Billie Holiday, b. Eleanora
Fagan in Baltimore, Md., Apr. 7, 1915, d. July 17, 1959, is
ranked by many as the finest vocalist and stylist that jazz
produced in the 1930s. The illegitimate child of a jazz guitarist,
Holiday's early years were scarred by poverty. After moving
with her mother to New York City, she began singing in small
Harlem nightclubs and recorded a few songs with Benny GOODMAN
and Duke ELLINGTON. But wide public recognition came only
with a series of recordings (1935-39) she made with the pianist
Teddy WILSON and his band. Her subsequent recordings were
almost always accompanied by groups that included the top
instrumentalists of the day; among the finest are those she
made with the saxophonist Lester YOUNG.
Holiday's later career was marred by personal tragedy and
by a drug addiction she tried vainly to conquer. She made
her final appearance (June 1959) at a benefit concert in New
York, where a few days later she was arrested on her deathbed
on narcotics charges.
Her most memorable recordings include several acid-toned songs,
among them "Strange Fruit" (1939), about a lynching
in the South and "God Bless the Child" (1941), one
of her own compositions, about poverty.
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