Billie Holiday

Eleanora Fagan, famously known as Billie Holiday, sang her aching life experiences into

becoming the most influential jazz lyricist and vocalist in the 20th century. From Philadelphia,

Billie was born to a young unwed couple in 1915. After her father left her mother, Billie dropped

out of school because she could not afford it. Unfortunately, this was just one of the many events

that occurred in her life which led to the discovery of her unique jazz lifestyle.

At the age of eleven, she was raped by her neighbor, and then worked in a house of

prostitution with her mother after which she was sent to prison for solicitation. She grew up

alone, abandoned, feeling angry, unloved and inferior which changed her personality into a

careless, risk taking, self-destructing woman. Even after all she went through, it did not stop

Billie from singing table to table, improvising songs, and by the time she was eighteen, she

finally got to peruse her passion by getting her first record deal through John Hammond.

Billie’s childhood tragedies were not the only ones she encountered. She was arrested for

illegal drugs use many times, which later deeply affected her voice. Besides drugs, her choice of

men also led her into frequent trouble. Due to the troubled past and death of her father, she did

not have a male role model to compare her love interests with. She would choose mean guys,

who would hit her, sometimes at her own will. She was hungry for love and wanted to feel

needed and accepted, to the extent that she was not only sexually involved with men, but

multiple women as well. Unfortunately, that hunger was never over for her because she never
had any children of her own. To fill that desire, she used to breastfeed, play, and sing to her

Godson.

I am not a big fan of music, but after watching the documentary, I couldn’t help myself

but listen to some of her songs of which my personal favorite is Strange Fruit. Her music was not

just for entertainment but was a powerful tool to call awareness to societal issues. Being a

woman and one of the first black performers to work with white performers, Billie had a hard

time breaking racial barriers and coping up with racial comments. Because of her rough

childhood, she tackled it the only way she knew – with violence. According to her friends, she

was a role model for girls; high heels and lipstick with the first of a man.

She did not have many people she could trust. And even if she did, her trust issues made

it very hard for her to live her life to the fullest. For instance, in the documentary, her friend

shared a story about how Billie got so worried when she went to the bathroom. Billie thought her

friend had left her and so she stood outside the door until she came out. This feeling of

abandonment must have been from her father leaving her mother.

Comparing her to this century, Billie Holiday reminds me of Michael Jackson. Both of

them had a beautiful voice, but sadly were tormented by racial issues. Michael Jackson went

under extensive surgery to fit in, and then died of a drug overdose. However, I do not believe she

was a victim. She lived her life the way she wanted. Not just that, she got to meet her role model

Louis Armstrong. From what she was to who she became, Billie Holiday owned up to all her

actions. Although money allowed her to move in social status, it also ruined her since she used
most of it to buy drugs. She would buy them and hide them in her room, in amounts that even her

dog was high on drugs. Drugging herself, in my opinion, was her way out of her painful life. She

felt good being in risky dangerous situations, from stealing gold from shops to doing drugs in her

hospital bed knowing she was in a critical condition. Slowly, her voice hardened, she forgot

lyrics, and this addiction became her downfall.

In spite of her personal tragedies and her way of living, Billie Holiday was an enduring

symbol of her art. Her soul was in her voice, and it affected hundreds and thousands. She was

raped, prostituted and arrested, yet she kept going on with her life. She used her pain and her

personal experiences to make a change. Although the documentary mainly focused on Billie’s

hardships, I believe she is one of the best jazz performers we have studied in class, who played

the best instrument of all – her voice. The amount of people that showed up at her funeral was

proof that even with her violent, careless behavior, her arrests and her use of profanity, people

loved her, appreciated her, and admired her talent.