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Billie Holiday

(1915 – 1959) Hard times were a steady theme in the life of Jazz singer Billie Holiday, and that was true from the time she was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, Pa., to a teenage mother. Raised without a father in Baltimore, Md., she was taken in by relatives while her mother scratched out a meager living working menial service jobs on the passenger rail lines. Holiday dropped out of school by age 11, moving with her mother to New York City shortly thereafter.  A devotee of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, Holiday began singing in Harlem nightclubs in her late teens. Her spare, haunting vocal style eventually attracted the attention of legendary record man...