When was billie holiday famous

Holiday toured extensively in and with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw bands. While on tour, Holiday was often subjected to discrimination. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. Her interpretation of the anti-lynching poem Strange Fruit was included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

She was returned to her mother's care in August of that year. According to Donald Clarke's biography, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon , she returned there in after she had been sexually assaulted. In her difficult early life, Holiday found solace in music, singing along to the records of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong.

She followed her mother, who had moved to New York City in the late s, and worked in a house of prostitution in Harlem for a time. Around , Holiday began singing in local clubs and renamed herself "Billie" after the film star Billie Dove. At the age of 18, Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond while she was performing in a Harlem jazz club. Hammond was instrumental in getting Holiday recording work with an up-and-coming clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman.

With Goodman, she sang vocals for several tracks, including her first commercial release "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" and the top 10 hit "Riffin' the Scotch. Known for her distinctive phrasing and expressive, sometimes melancholy voice, Holiday went on to record with jazz pianist Teddy Wilson and others in Around this time, Holiday met and befriended saxophonist Lester Young, who was part of Count Basie 's orchestra on and off for years.

He even lived with Holiday and her mother Sadie for a while. Young gave Holiday the nickname "Lady Day" in — the same year she joined Basie's band.

In return, she called him "Prez," which was her way of saying that she thought it was the greatest. Holiday toured with the Count Basie Orchestra in The following year, she worked with Artie Shaw and his orchestra. Holiday broke new ground with Shaw, becoming one of the first female African American vocalists to work with a white orchestra. Promoters, however, objected to Holiday — for her race and for her unique vocal style — and she ended up leaving the orchestra out of frustration.

She developed some of her trademark stage persona there — wearing gardenias in her hair and singing with her head tilted back. Holiday recorded the song with the Commodore label instead. Holiday married James Monroe in New York: Stein and Day, Clarke, Donald. Wishing on the Moon. New York: Viking, Holiday, Billie, and William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Nicholson, Stuart.

Boston: Northeastern University Press, O'Meally, Robert G. NewYork: Arcade Publishers, Toggle navigation. Early life. New York City In Holiday moved to New York City with her mother, who began work as a housemaid, but the depression time of low economic conditions with high rates of unemployment soon left her mother without work. Personal tragedies By the mids Holiday had been arrested many times for illegal drug use. For More Information Chilton, John.

Living in extreme poverty, Holiday dropped out of school in the fifth grade and found a job running errands in a brothel. When she was twelve, Holiday moved with her mother to Harlem, where she was eventually arrested for prostitution. Desperate for money, Holiday looked for work as a dancer at a Harlem speakeasy. This led to a number of other jobs in Harlem jazz clubs, and by she had her first major breakthrough.

She was only twenty when the well-connected jazz writer and producer John Hammond heard her fill in for a better-known performer. Soon after, he reported that she was the greatest singer he had ever heard.