Description

As we continue to celebrate #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on Billie Holiday, the singer and artist who not only influenced peers and progeny alike with her inventive interpretation and phrasing in songs, but also composed several of her signature songs which in turn became jazz and blues standards.

To learn more about Billie Holiday, read If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday by Farah Jasmine Griffin, check out the 2019 documentary Billie on Hulu, watch clips of Holiday in New Orleans on YouTube take 2021’s The United States vs. Billie Holiday, also on Hulu. And there’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill on Amazon Prime Video. Also watch her classic 1957 performance of “Fine and Mellow” on CBS’s Sound of Jazz and listen to the 2021 podcast on Audible, Billie Was a Black Woman,

Sources:

• https://www.npr.org/2020/12/03/940104383/new-documentary-billie-explores-mysteries-of-billie-holiday-and-her-biographer

• https://www.npr.org/2019/08/23/748740849/returning-to-lady-a-reflection-on-two-decades-in-search-of-billie-holiday

• https://www.biography.com/musician/billie-holiday

• https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/billie-holiday-about-the-singer/68/

• https://www.si.edu/spotlight/billie-holiday

• https://youtu.be/YKqxG09wlIA (“Fine and Mellow” on Sound of Jazz)

• https://youtu.be/hKimh-iPd_0 (Billie documentary trailer)