Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), born Eleanora Fagan and later called Lady Day, was an American jazz singer.

Early life
According to Billie Holiday's accounts, she was recruited by a brothel, worked as a prostitute, and was eventually imprisoned for a short time. It was in Harlem in the early 1930s that she started singing for tips in various night clubs. According to legend, penniless and facing eviction, she sang "Body and Soul" in a local club and reduced the audience to tears. She later worked at various clubs for tips, ultimately landing at Pod's and Jerry's, a well known Harlem jazz club. Her early work history is hard to verify, though accounts say she was working at a club named Monette's in 1933 when she was discovered by talent scout John Hammond. Young nicknamed her "Lady Day" and she, in turn, dubbed him "Prez." In the late 1930s, she also had brief stints as a big band vocalist with Count Basie (1937) and Artie Shaw (1938). The latter association placed her among the first black women to work with a white orchestra, an arrangement that went against the temper of the times. Billie's Blues, a biography by British jazz historian John Chilton, details this period of her life.

Early singing career
Holiday was recording for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to "Strange Fruit," a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym "Lewis Allen" for the poem, which was set to music and performed at teachers' union meetings. It was eventually heard by Barney Josephson, proprietor of Café Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday. She performed it at the club in 1939, with some trepidation, fearing possible retaliation. Holiday later said that the imagery in "Strange Fruit" reminded her of her father's death, and that this played a role in her persistence to perform it. In a 1958 interview, she also bemoaned the fact that many people did not grasp the song's message: "They'll ask me to 'sing that sexy song about the people swinging'," she said.

The Commodore Years and "Strange Fruit"
In addition to owning Commodore Records, Milt Gabler was an A&R man for Decca Records, and he signed Holiday to the label in 1944. Her first recording for Decca, "Lover Man," was a song that had been written especially for her by Jimmy Davis, Roger "Ram" Ramirez, and Jimmy Sherman. Although the song's lyrics describe a woman who has never known love ("I long to try something I never had"), its theme — a woman longing for a missing lover — and its refrain, "Lover man, oh, where can you be?", struck a chord in war-time America and the record became one of Holiday's biggest hits.
Holiday continued to record for Decca until 1950, including one session in which she and Louis Armstrong sang several duets. Holiday's Decca recordings offer a sharp contrast to those of her Columbia period. The songs she was able to record at Decca generally were top-quality, and many of her songs were accompanied by orchestras or string sections rather than jazz combos. Some of the songs Holiday recorded for Decca became her signatures ("Don't Explain," "Good Morning Heartache").

Decca Records and "Lover Man"
Her personal life was as turbulent as the songs she sang. Holiday stated that she began using hard drugs in the early 1940s. She married trombonist Jimmy Monroe on August 25, 1941. While still married to Monroe, she took up with trumpeter Joe Guy, her drug dealer, as his common law wife. She finally divorced Monroe in 1947, and also split with Guy. In 1947 she was jailed on drug charges and served eight months at the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution for Women in West Virginia. Her New York City Cabaret Card was subsequently revoked, which kept her from working in clubs there for the remaining 12 years of her life, except when she played at the Ebony Club in 1948, where she opened under the permission of John Levy.
By the 1950s, Holiday's drug abuse, drinking, and relations with abusive men led to deteriorating health. Her voice coarsened and did not project the vibrance it once did.
On March 28, 1952, Holiday married Louis McKay, an opportunistic failed pimp, McKay, like most of the men in her life, was abusive, but did try to get her off drugs. They were separated at the time of her death, but McKay had plans to start a chain of Billie Holiday vocal studios, a la the Arthur Murray dance schools. Holiday also had a relationship with Orson Welles.
Her late recordings on Verve constitute about a third of her commercial recorded legacy and are as well remembered as her earlier work for the Columbia, Commodore and Decca labels. In later years her voice became more fragile, but it never lost the edge that had always made it so distinctive. On November 10, 1956, she performed before a packed audience at Carnegie Hall, a major accomplishment for any artist, especially a black artist of the segregated period of American history. Her performance of "Fine And Mellow" on CBS's The Sound of Jazz program is memorable for her interplay with her long-time friend Lester Young; both were less than two years from death. (see the clip here)
Holiday first toured Europe in 1954, as part of a Leonard Feather package that also included Buddy DeFranco and Red Norvo. When she returned, almost five years later, she made one of her last television appearances for Granada's "Chelsea at Nine," in London. Her final studio recordings were made for MGM in 1959, with lush backing from Ray Ellis and his Orchestra, who had also accompanied her on Columbia's Lady in Satin album the previous year — see below). The MGM sessions were released posthumously on a self-titled album, later re-titled and re-released as Last Recordings. Her final public appearance, a benefit concert at the Phoenix Theater in New York's Greenwich Village, took place on May 25, 1959. According to the evening's masters of ceremony, jazz critic Leonard Feather and TV host Steve Allen, she was only able to make it through two songs, one of which was "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do."
On May 31, 1959, she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. On July 12, she was placed under house arrest at the hospital for possession, despite evidence suggesting the drugs may have been planted on her. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from cirrhosis of the liver on July 17 1959 at the age of 44. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with only $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person.
Billie Holiday is interred in Saint Raymond's Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

Later life
Her impact on other artists was undeniable, however; even after her death she continues to influence singers. In 1972, Diana Ross portrayed her in a film that was loosely based on Lady Sings the Blues, the autobiography she co-authored with William Dufty. Although the Hollywood treatment strayed far from the true story, it was a commercial success and earned Ms. Ross a Best Actress nomination. In 1987, Billie Holiday was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, in 1994, the United States Postal Service introduced a Billie Holiday postage stamp, she ranked #6 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock n' Roll in 1999, and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Over the years, there have been many recorded tributes to Billie Holiday, including "Angel of Harlem," a 1988 release by the group U2.
Although her unique style has never been successfully duplicated, Billie Holiday inspired many singers and continues to be regarded as one of the jazz idiom's most important vocalists.

Impact
Her distinct delivery made Billie Holiday's performances instantly recognizable throughout her career. Years of abuse eventually altered the texture of her voice and gave it a prepossessing fragility, but the emotion with which she imbued each song remained intact.. Her last major recordings, a 1958 album entitled Lady in Satin, features the backing of a 40-piece orchestra conducted and arranged by Ray Ellis, who said of the album in 1997:
I would say that the most emotional moment was her listening to the playback of "I'm a Fool to Want You." There were tears in her eyes...After we finished the album I went into the control room and listened to all the takes. I must admit I was unhappy with her performance, but I was just listening musically instead of emotionally. It wasn't until I heard the final mix a few weeks later that I realized how great her performance really was.

Voice
More music by Billie Holiday:

I'm a Fool to Want You (file info) — play in browser (beta)

• From the album Lady in Satin, 1958; orchestration by Ray Ellis.
  Problems playing the files? See media help.
  Sophisticated Lady (Duke Ellington) [1]
  Miss Brown to You (Leo Robin, Ralph Rainger, Richard Whiting) [2]
  Summertime (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) [3]
  Strange Fruit [4]
  I'm Pulling Through [5]
  If I Were You [6]
  You Go To My Head (Haven Gillespie, J. Fred Coots) [7]
  Body and Soul (Edward Heyman, Frank Eyton, Johnny Green, Robert Sour) [8] Music samples
  Billie Holiday is referred to in The Trumpet of the Swan, along with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong as one of three siblings, one of whom, Louie, is the main character. She is also referenced in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Frank O'Hara's 1959 poem "The Day Lady Died" is written in tribute to her.
  
  Discography
  Note: To avoid repetition (and a very long discography) most of Holiday's individual albums are omitted, as almost all the material from these albums is available on the box sets listed below.
  Box sets:
  Other studio recordings:
  
  Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944)
  The Complete Commodore Recordings (1939, 1944)
  
  
  
  • For collectors not interested in non-released studio takes, The Commodore Master Takes features only the released versions of Holiday's Commodore recordings.
    The Complete Decca Recordings (1944-1950)
    The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve (1945-1959)
    Lady in Satin (Columbia, 1958)
    New Orleans: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1946) (Giants of Jazz, 1983)
    The Sound of Jazz (Columbia, 1958) Live recordings