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Billie Holiday has been a great blessing to people of non-white skin color by breaking through American racial prejudices against almost impossible odds. She did this simply by the extraordinary quality of her voice and heart-felt performances. She has been a blessing both to African American and other "different people" through her performance of Strange Fruit in 1939 (youTube).
Like a pearl born through the hurting chip of sand in the shell the blessings world has received through Billie Holiday were born through extraordinary suffering.
Lonely death
Billie Holiday died in the Metropolitan Hospital, New York, on Friday, July 17, 1959, in the bed in which she had been arrested for illegal possession of narcotics a little more than a month before, as she lay mortally ill; in the room from which a police guard had been removed – by court order – only a few hours before her death, which, like her life, was disorderly and pitiful. She had been strikingly beautiful, but she was wasted physically to a small, grotesque caricature of herself. The worms of every kind of excess – drugs were only one – had eaten her ... The likelihood exists that among the last thoughts of this cynical, sentimental, profane, generous and greatly talented woman of 44 was the belief that she was to be arraigned the following morning. She would have been, eventually, although possibly not that quickly. In any case, she removed herself finally from the jurisdiction of any court here below.Cirrhosis of the liver from extensive drinking, heart disease where the cause of her death at the young age of 44. Perhaps we can also add broken heart as one of the causes?
Gilbert Millstein
Abandoned by her own mother
Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan (née Harris). Her father, Clarence Holiday, a musician, did not marry or live with her mother. Her mother had moved to Philadelphia at the age of thirteen, after being rejected from her parents' home in Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore for becoming pregnant. With no support from her own parents, Holiday's mother arranged for the young Holiday to stay with her older married half sister, Eva Miller, who lived in Baltimore.Can a little girl be pushed lower in life?
Billie Holiday had a difficult childhood. Her mother often took what were then known as "transportation jobs", serving on the passenger railroads. Holiday was left to be raised largely by Eva Miller's mother-in-law, Martha Miller, and suffered from her mother's absences and leaving her in others' care for much of the first ten years of her life
wikipedia
Holiday's mother returned to their home on December 24, 1926, to discover a neighbor, Wilbur Rich, raping Holiday. Rich was arrested. Officials placed the girl at the House of the Good Shepherd in protective custody as a state witness in the rape case. Holiday was released in February 1927, nearly twelve. She found a job running errands in a brothel. Holiday's mother became a prostitute and, within a matter of days of arriving in New York, Holiday, who had not yet turned fourteen, also became a prostitute for $5 a time.Searching for her father - getting abused instead
wikipedia
Eleanora Fagan took the artist's pseudo-name Billie from actress Billie Dove and last name Haliday (sic!) from her probable father whom she did not know.
It is not unusual that children with such background are strangely attracted to strong violent men and this was also the case with the "romances" in Billie Holiday's sad life.
In 1935, Billie Holiday had a small role as a woman being abused by her lover in Duke Ellington's short Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life. In her scene, she sang the song "Saddest Tale."Nigger!
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 became romantically involved with trumpeter Joe Guy, who was also her drug dealer, and she eventually became his common-law wife. She finally divorced Monroe in 1947 and also split with Guy.
On March 28, 1957, Holiday married Louis McKay, a Mafia enforcer, who like most of the men in her life was abusive, but he 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, à la Arthur Murray dance schools.
wikipedia
In November 1938 Holiday was asked to use the service elevator at the Lincoln Hotel, instead of the passage elevator, because white patrons of the hotels complained. This may have been the last straw for her. She left the band shortly after. Holiday spoke about the incident weeks later, saying "I was never allowed to visit the bar or the dining room as did other members of the band ... [and] I was made to leave and enter through the kitchen."
wikipedia
Pearl of performance
All of me
Why not take all of me
Can't you see
I'm no good without you
Take my lips
I want to loose them
Take my arms
I'll never use them
Your goodbye
Left me with eyes that cry
How can I go on dear without you
You took the part
That once was my heart
So why not take all of me
All of me
Why not take all of me
Can't you see
I'm no good without you
Take my lips
I want to loose them
Take my arms
I'll never use them
Your goodbye
Left me with eyes that cry
How can I go on dear without you
You took the best
So why not take the rest
Baby, take all of me
Listen to Billie Holiday and hear for yourself what is this pearl of performance, a blessing through suffering...
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