Similar to the founding principles of the blues, Billie Holiday’s life was marred with both the harsh realities of personal woes and boisterous changes of tempo. Nicknamed “Lady Day,” the Philadelphia-born singer used her tumultuous life experiences to create timeless jazz records. And within her music, her style became so unique that she altered the genre norm with songs like “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Strange Fruit,” and “All of Me.” She also set jazz standards with songs like “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Easy Living.”
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Lady Day, however, was taken from this world too soon at just 44 years old. Read below as we take a look into her last days and the legacy she left behind.
The Day Lady Day Passed Away
Billie Holiday passed away on July 17, 1959, of pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis, or liver disease, in the Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The cirrhosis was brought on by her long-fought battle with addiction and substance abuse. At the time of her death, her addictions had overrun her life to the point that jazz critic Leonard Feather noticed that the singer had lost 20 pounds, a cause of concern among those close to Holiday.
Adding another layer to the tragedy of her death was the social and political climate of the United States at the time. As a Black woman who had the strength to sing songs like “Strange Fruit,” Holiday had been held under intense scrutiny by authorities. And, while she lay dying, the police were arranging for an indictment of the singer.
Author Gilbert Millstein, who helped write the liner notes for Holiday’s live Carnegie Hall Concert album, described Holiday’s death this way: “[I]n 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.
“She had been strikingly beautiful, but her talent was wasted. 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.”
Wide-Reaching Legacy
Despite the tragedy of Holiday’s death and the suffering that led to it, her music took on a life of its own. Today, Holiday is regarded as a pioneer in the jazz field, who not only pushed back on the status quo of sound but of topic, too. After her death, she was awarded four posthumous Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame despite not being classified as a rock artist.
“With her luminous voice, Billie Holiday changed jazz forever,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame stated on its website. “Her life was tough but so was she. Billie Holiday took her pain and channeled it into haunting vocal performances that resonated in your spine.”
In 1958, Frank Sinatra told Ebony magazine just how important Holiday’s music was for the world. “With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius,” he said. “It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.”
Rest in peace, Lady Day.
(Photo by William Gottlieb/Redferns)
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