Billie Holiday - By Fallon Stovall

         

            It’s the 1930’s in America; music halls, bars, and restaurants are filled with the audible sounds of rhythm, woodwind, and brass instruments, creating music known as jazz and swing, ultimately defining this era. During this jazz and swing era, blossomed a star with a unique and soulful voice, influencing audiences and artists across the world; her name was Billie Holiday, and she is considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time.

            Billie Holiday was born as Eleanor Fagan in Baltimore in 1915, and grew up in a family that emphasized the importance of jazz music. As a young teenager, Holiday began singing in after-hours jazz clubs, and then onto the music scene in Harlem, New York where she performed in different nightclubs. By the mid 1930s, she “appeared as vocalist with big bands of Count Basie and Artie Shaw,” however worked most of her career as solo artist (Whalen 8).  She began her solo career as a recording artist when she was only eighteen, and she would continue to record for the next 25 years recording more than 300 titles. Holiday credited much of her early musical inspiration to “blues singer Bessie Smith and jazz trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong, both of whom recorded jazz music during the 1920s” (Whalen 3-4).

            It was through Holiday’s characteristic and poignant vocals in the jazz and swing scene, that people of the times were able to escape from their hardships in reality and go to a place of content. However, her music not only made an impact entertainment wise, but also helped pave the way for the civil rights movement. One such song, "Strange Fruit", was not written to be performed or “simply to entertain,” but to call attention; the song “came out of the injuries of the real world, not the need to create romantic illusions, and it was intended to provoke a social and political reaction” (Hamill 2).  Thus, Billie Holiday was able to influence people, both politically and socially, all through the power of music and a God-gifted talent.  

Works Cited

Hamill, Pete. "Blood at the Root." National Review 52.9 (2000): 58-61. Web.

Whalen, Doretta Lonnett. "A Sociological and Ethnomusicological Study of Billie Holiday and Her Music." Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences 61.1 (2000): 25-. Web.