Miss Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia PA. Her friend and musical partner Lester Young, nicknamed her “Lady Day”. Best known for her music influence on Jazz and Pop singing, Billie Holiday also co-wrote some of her songs. Some of her most recognizable hits are; “Lady Sings The Blues”, “God Bless The Child” and “Strange Fruit” (a protest song that addresses lynchings).

Holiday, like many great artists, led a hard life. Her mother had her at a young age and left Billie in the care of a half sister. Her mother was mostly absent from the first 10 years of her life, from which she suffered from. When she was 10 she went to live with her mother where she was raped by a neighbor at the age of 11. Her and her mother went to work for a Madam as prostitutes. After being arrested and a short stint in prison, her mother left her again for Harlem and this is when she discovered the  music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.

Billie started singing by the time she was 14. She eventually moved with her mother in Harlem where they both worked at a brothel, before it was raided. Eventually she started recording music and at the beginning of her career, she found herself in direct competition with Ella Fitzgerald. Holiday went on to record some iconic songs and was heralded by greats; including Frank Sinatra who stated that:

“With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me.”

As her successes stacked, so did her addiction to drugs. By the time she was 44 she was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and although she was advised to stop drinking and stopped for a moment, she continued to drink heavily. A month after being arrested in her New York hospital bed for possession of Narcotics, Billie Holiday passed away. The New York Times wrote:

Billie Holiday died in the Metropolitan Hospital, New York, on Friday, July 17, 1959, in the bed in which she had been arrested for illegal possession of narcotics a little more than a month before, as she lay mortally ill; in the room from which a police guard had been removed – by court order – only a few hours before her death, which, like her life, was disorderly and pitiful. She had been strikingly beautiful, but she was wasted physically to a small, grotesque caricature of herself. The worms of every kind of excess – drugs were only one – had eaten her … The likelihood exists that among the last thoughts of this cynical, sentimental, profane, generous and greatly talented woman of 44 was the belief that she was to be arraigned the following morning. She would have been, eventually, although possibly not that quickly. In any case, she removed herself finally from the jurisdiction of any court here below.

*Billie Holiday and her dog Mister

*Thanks to Reader Jill for this Suggestion!

When my parents moved us 3 kids out of a 2 bedroom apartment and into a 3 bedroom apartment, it lessened the load of having 3 kids sharing one tiny room. I still felt bad for my sister who was 7 years older than me and sharing a bed with her bratty little sister. Part of the bonus (for me) was being smitten with how cool I thought my sister was and getting a close up view of her day to day. She, obviously, had seniority with decorating our room. That’s how’s I got familiar with this English Chinese-Jamaican Beauty. Her image (among posters of James Dean, Black Sheep, Cheap Trick and Neneh Cherry) covered me and my sisters shared bedroom, alongside other greats like; Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista. She was the rare chocolate center in sea of vanilla cupcakes, showing my young self that WE existed in somewhere in fashion and beauty. She was not the first, nor the last…but for me at that tender age, she was the only. Here’s looking at you Naomi!

Let’s not forget her hot cameo in one of my favorite films, “GIRL 6″ Directed by Spike Lee