With my 8th round pick, in the category of Women, team Five-hole selects
Billie Holiday.
To me Billie Holiday characterizes many of the triumphs and tragedies of the Black jazz culture of America in the 40s and 50s. She was incredibly talented, perhaps the most celebrated female jazz vocalist of all time (Ella deserves some consideration too), but fell in to the familiar traps of many jazz musicians -- especially black jazz musicians -- drug abuse, poor health, and financial exploitation.
One of her most famous pieces -- though she didn't write it, she popularized it and the song is connected intimately with her -- is Strange Fruit, based off a poem about the lynching of African Americans. It was incredibly controversial. She performed it at an integrated night club in 1939 in Grenwich Village, though she feared retaliation for the at-the-time taboo anti-white sentiment. "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."
Billie was arrested several times for possession of narcotics and imprisoned for almost a year. "On May 16, 1947, Holiday was arrested for the possession of narcotics and drugs in her New York apartment. On May 27, 1947, she was in court. "It was called 'The United States of America versus Billie Holiday'. And that's just the way it felt," Holiday recalled in her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. Holiday pleaded guilty and was sentenced to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia. Holiday said she never "sang a note" at Alderson even though people wanted her to." Holiday was arrested again on January 22, 1949 inside her room at San Francisco's Hotel Mark Twain.
"By the 1950s, Holiday's drug abuse, drinking, and relations with abusive men led to deteriorating health. As evidenced by her later recordings, Holiday's voice coarsened and did not project the vibrance it once had. However, she retained — and, perhaps, strengthened — the emotional impact of her delivery."
"On May 31, 1959, she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. Police officers were stationed at the door to her room. She was arrested for drug possession as she lay dying and her hospital room was raided by authorities. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person."
Billie performing Strange Fruit:
And my favorite of her songs, My Man.
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