The Real Billie Holiday, Part One – 1930s

For Jazz singer Billie Holiday the 1930s was a time of emergence.  She was a little astonished to discover the effect her singing had.  In the early years she sang mostly Ballads and Tin Pan Alley songs.   This profile of Billie Holiday recaps the basic outline of her story in three chapters covering the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.  Holiday is quoted from interviews and her famed autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues.  This is also a photo essay presenting her constantly shifting visage. ‘Like I’m playing a horn’ It’s not an exaggeration to call Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan, 1915-59) the best of all jazz singers.  She fused Jazz and Popular music profoundly impacting the art of song and all subsequent singers.   Billie sang intuitively, becoming “the foremost female singer in jazz history” according to The Grove Dictionary of Jazz.  The entry on Holiday by James Lincoln Collier asserts that her recordings of 1935-45:  “. . . constitute a major body of jazz music. . .  More than nearly any other singer, Holiday phrased her performances in the manner of a jazz instrumental soloist, and accordingly she has to be seen as a complete jazz musician, not just a singer.” Using her voice expressively Holiday bent notes like a horn player blowing along with the cats.  Holiday revised songs for the better in her personal interpretation, building one of the