In February 2021 , " The United States vs. Billie Holiday " premiered on Hulu , earning a Golden Globe Best Actress award for Andra Day who limn thejazzsinger . While many may be familiar with Holiday ’s bittersweet song and position as a singing legend , few may cognise as much about the trauma , heartbreak and disaster that informed much of her work and prematurely ended her career and biography .
Born on April 7 , 1915 , Holiday live a unmanageable puerility and became lie with as a New York City singing whiz by age 18 . She graduated from the Harlem nightclub vista to gain international stardom with songs like " What a Little Moonlight Can Do " and " Riffin ' the Scotch '' but , she battle a heroin addiction , and was eventually targeted by the government in an effort to persecute Black the great unwashed in the war on drugs .
Although Holiday had a vocal range of justone octave and a half , it was her distinctive phrasing and aroused connective to her songs that riveted audience ; many of her well - known tunes offered intimate insights into the pain and grief she endured behind her stage persona . Here are five Billie Holiday Song that take you into her world :
1. “Strange Fruit”
Time magazinedeemed " Strange Fruit " the song of the century in 1999 , and no wonder . While Holiday popularized the chilling lyrics , the song wasoriginally a poempenned by a Jewish communist instructor and civil rights militant from the Bronx named Abel Meeropol . Lines like , " Southern tree diagram bear a strange yield / Blood on the leaves and blood line at the solution / bleak body swinging in the Southern breeze / Strange yield hanging from the poplar tree trees " were urge by Meeropol ’s splanchnic reaction to thelynchingof Black men in the 1930s . " I wrote ' Strange Fruit ' because I hate lynch , and I detest unjustness , and I hate the people who perpetuate it,“Meeropol said , according to the Guardian .
Meeropol print " Strange Fruit " in a teacher union publication and later composed it into a call , which he passed along to a nightclub proprietor . That ’s when Holiday first heard it and felt move to do it . " It cue me of how Pop died , " she wrote in her 1956 autobiography , " Lady Sings the Blues , " have-to doe with to her father who died from a fatal lung disorderliness at 39 after being turned away from a hospital because he was disastrous . " But I have to keep singing it , not only because people ask for it , but because 20 eld after Pop died , the things that killed him are still pass in the South . "
" Strange Fruit " played a meaning function in Holiday ’s lifespan due to the impassioned reception it evoked from interview . While many applauded Holiday ’s poignant carrying into action of the racetrack , others , like Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner ( and roll in the hay racist)Harry Anslinger , resent the song . Anslingertried to ostracize Holidayfrom performing the birdcall , and when she refuse , he find a way to seek revenge by set her up to buy heroin . When she was caught using it , she was imprisoned for a year and a half , and when she was release , federal bureau refused to reissue her nightclub performer ’s licence . Holiday handle to continue perform sold - out concert at Carnegie Hall , but her wellness deteriorated , and in 1959 , she checked herself into a New York City hospital with heart and lung problems and cirrhosis of the liver . Anslinger arranged for his man to manacle Holiday to her hospital bottom and forbid doctors from ply her further handling , which result in her death .
2. “God Bless the Child”
Holidaywrote this 1941 cart track in collaborationwith her frequent songwriting cooperator , Arthur Herzog . The words were inspired by an argument Holiday had with her mother , Sadie , about finances . vacation ’s relationship with her female parent was historically complex — Sadie was an unwed teenagerwhen she gave birth to Billie ( née Eleanora Fagan ) , and although she married the minor ’s sire , Clarence Holiday , a few days after her birth , he remained largely absent over the year in pursuit of his own wind career .
A few year before Holiday penned " God sanctify the fry , " she ’d lent her mother a big sum of money to open a eating place . But when Holiday was in need of a loanword , Sadie turn down to aid her . As she chronicled in her autobiography , Holiday call back that during the argument , she yelled the proverb , " God bless the child that got his own , " at her mother , which prompt the demarcation of the song .
Herzog , however , later contended that he was responsible for the vast bulk of the lyrics . He say Holiday told him about the argument over dinner party and when he call for her to elaborate on the meaning of , " God hallow the Child , " he was the one who craft her reply into the song lyrics .
3. “Gloomy Sunday”
Also screw as the " Hungarian Suicide Song , " " Gloomy Sunday " was n’t a Holiday original ; it was compose in 1931 by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress , with words added by Hungarian poetLászló Jávor . write in 1933 as " Vége a Világnak " ( " ending of the World " ) , the song gained notoriety in 1935 when a shoemaker in Budapest pop off by suicide and quoted the words in his final note . There were other tales of suicide link up with the song as well , with one history claiming that either Jávor or Seress ' estranged fiancée cite the strain ’s title in her self-annihilation banker’s bill and another say that two men also supposedly burgeon forth themselves after listening to a set play it .
Urban fable say that legion suicides were tied to the birdcall throughout the 1930s , but there ’s no hard evidence to support that . TheBBC did , however , ostracize Holiday ’s 1941 versionof the song from being pass around because it was think " detrimental to wartime morale . " The prohibition was n’t wind until 2002 .
4. “Lover Man”
vacation did n’t write the song herself , but it waswritten by one of her old friends , Roger ( " Ram " ) Ramirez , along with Jimmy Davis and James Sherman . The lyric poem " The Nox is cold and I ’m so all alone / I’d give my person just to call you my own , " allude to Holiday ’s troubled amatory relationships .
5. “Billie’s Blues (I Love My Man)”
Holiday compose this song in 1936,largely improvising itjust before or at its recording school term . The Sung dynasty showcases Holiday ’s impertinent side and was considered a resolve of her acquire maturity — she was done putting up with losers . " Some men like me ‘cause I ’m happy / Some ‘cause I ’m snappy / Some call me dear / Others recollect I get money … Now if you put that all together / It makes me everything a good man want . "
Holiday ’s interpretation of the track was induct into theGrammy Hall of Famein 1989 .
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