Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Eleanora Fagan, professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJazz Singer
Date of Birth7 April 1915
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
There's no damn business like show business -- you have to smile to keep from throwing up.
I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Money, you have lots of friends hanging round the door. When it's gone and the spending ends They don't come no more.
If I don't have friends, then I ain't got nothing.
No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.
All dope can do for you is kill you... the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.
The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy ... it's sort of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.
If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.
I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.
I think I copied my style from Louis Armstrong. Because I used to like the big volume and the big sound that Bessie Smith got when she sang ... So I liked the feeling that Louis got and I wanted the big volume that Bessie Smith got. But I found that it didn't work with me, because I didn't have a big voice. So anyway between the two of them I sorta got Billie Holiday.
The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.
The only reason they're out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.