Billie Holiday

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Birth Name: Eleanora Fagan Gough

Born: 7 April 1915 Died: 17 July 1959

Country of origin: United States

Lists

156 votes

A Change of Names (77 items)
list by tartan_skirt

Published 18 years, 1 month ago

23 comments

102 votes

Gone, but not forgotten (2175 items)
list by Agent Kermit D. Fonz

Published 1 year, 10 months ago

14 comments

60 votes

Imaginary Meeting- Listal Game (90 items)
list by ST9156

Published 13 years, 1 month ago

33 comments

58 votes

More Letters to Dead People (94 items)
list by ccc25

Published 15 years, 4 months ago

8 comments

57 votes

Some Good Quotes I Like (17 items)
list by Katherine Fell

Published 14 years, 1 month ago

7 comments

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Billie Holiday Videos

Billie Holiday - All of me

177 Views, 2 votes

Added 16 years ago

Billie Holiday - The Man I Love

146 Views

Added 12 years ago

Billie Holiday Interview in New York, Extremely Rare!.avi

131 Views

Added 12 years ago

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Photos

7 votes

4 votes

3 votes

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Description: The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band. She made clear her debts to Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (in her autobiography she admitted, "I always wanted Bessie's big sound and Pops' feeling"), but in truth her style was virtually her own, quite a shock in an age of interchangeable crooners and band singers.

With her spirit shining through on every recording, Holiday's technical expertise also excelled in comparison to the great majority of her contemporaries. Often bored by the tired old Tin Pan Alley songs she was forced to record early in her career, Holiday fooled around with the beat and the melody, phrasing behind the beat and often rejuvenating the standard melody with harmonies borrowed from her favorite horn players, Armstrong and Lester Young. (She often said she tried to sing like a horn.) Her notorious private life -- a series of abusive relationships, substance addictions, and periods of depression -- undoubtedly assisted her legendary status, but Holiday's best performances ("Lover Man," "Don't Explain," "Strange Fruit," her own composition "God Bless the Child") remain among the most sensitive and accomplished vocal performances ever recorded. More than technical ability, more than purity of voice, what made Billie Holiday one of the best vocalists of the century -- easily the equal of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra -- was her relentlessly individualist temperament, a quality that colored every one of her endlessly nuanced performances. ... (more)