Billie Holiday

Hammond was quite impressed by Holiday's singing style. He said of her, "Her singing almost changed my music tastes and my musical life, because she was the first girl singer I'd come across who actually sang like an improvising jazz genius." Hammond compared Holiday favorably to Armstrong and said she had a good sense of lyric content at her young age.<br /><br /> In 1935, Billie Holiday had a small role as a woman being abused by her lover in Duke Ellington's short Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life. In her scene, she sang the song "Saddest Tale."<br /><br /> Holiday was signed to Brunswick Records by John Hammond to record current pop tunes with Teddy Wilson in the new "swing" style for the growing jukebox trade. They were given free rein to improvise the material. Holiday's improvisation of the melody line to fit the emotion was revolutionary. Their first collaboration included "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," and "Miss Brown To You." The record label did not favor the recording session, because producers wanted Holiday to sound more like Cleo Brown. After "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" garnered success, however, the company began considering Holiday an artist in her own right. She began recording under her own name a year later (on the 35 cent Vocalion label), producing a series of extraordinary performances with groups comprising the swing era's finest musicians. Read Less

This may have been the last straw for her. She left the band shortly after. Holiday spoke about the incident weeks later, saying "I was never allowed to visit the bar or the dining room as did other members of the band... and I was made to leave and enter through the kitchen."<br /><br /> There are no surviving live recordings of Holiday with Artie Shaw's band. Because she was under a separate recording label and possibly because of her race, Holiday was only able to record one record with Shaw, "Any Old Time".<br /><br /> By the late 1930s, Billie Holiday had toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, scored a string of radio and retail hits with Teddy Wilson, and became an established artist in the recording industry. Her songs "What A Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Easy Living" were being imitated by singers across America and were quickly becoming jazz standards. Read Less

Her record label Vocalion listed the single as its fourth best seller for the same month. "I'm Gonna Lock My Heart" peaked at number 2 on the pop charts according to Joel Whitburn's "Pop Memories: 1890–1954" book.<br /><br /> Holiday was recording for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to "Strange Fruit", a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym "Lewis Allan" for the poem, which was set to music and performed at teachers' union meetings. It was eventually heard by Barney Josephson, proprietor of Café Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday. Read Less

And that's just the way it felt," Holiday recalled. During the trial, Holiday received notice that her lawyer was not interested in coming down to the trial and representing her. "In plain English that meant no one in the world was interested in looking out for me," Holiday said. Dehydrated and unable to hold down any food, she pled guilty and asked to be sent to the hospital. The D.A. spoke up in her defense, saying, "If your honor please, this is a case of a drug addict, but more serious, however, than most of our cases, Miss Holiday is a professional entertainer and among the higher rank as far as income was concerned." Read Less

Holiday placed second in the Down Beat poll for 1946 and 1947, her highest ranking in the poll. Read Less

The Cabaret system started in 1940 and was designed to prevent people of "bad character" from working on licensed premises. A performer had to renew his or her license every two years. This system lasted until 1967. Clubs that sold alcohol in New York were among the highest paying venues in the country. Club owners knew blacklisted performers had limited work options, so they would offer them a smaller salary. This greatly reduced Holiday's earning power. She hadn't been receiving proper royalties for her work until she signed with Decca, so her main source of revenue were her club concerts. The problem worsened when Holiday's records went out of print in the 1950s. She seldom received any money from royalties in her latter years. For instance, in 1958 Holiday received a royalty check of only 11 dollars. Also, Holiday's lawyer during the late 1950s, Earle Warren Zaidins, failed to register with BMI on all but two songs she had written or co-written, costing her potential revenue. Read Less