Mama may have, Papa may have,
But God bless the child that's got his own.

Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr., "God Bless the Child"

Portrait of Billie Holiday,
Carl Van Vechten, photographer, March 23, 1949.
Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964

Jazz singer Billie Holiday was born on April 7, 1915, in Baltimore, Maryland. She made her professional singing debut in Harlem nightclubs in 1931, and made her first recordings in 1933. Although she had no formal musical training, she became one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, and her recordings are now regarded as masterpieces.

Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues,¹ opens with the line: "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married; he was 18, she was 16 and I was three." Holiday's given name was Eleanora Fagan, but when she started to perform she chose the stage name Billie after Billie Dove, an early movie star.

A Terrible Blot on American Civilization.
3424 Lynchings in 33 Years [detail], 1922.
An American Time Capsule

The tension of racism was a powerful subtext to Holiday's life story. Because of Jim Crow laws, still in effect through most of her career, she occasionally found herself in the ironic situation of being the featured vocalist in clubs that refused to serve blacks. The liner notes to Immortal Sessions of Billie Holiday describe her 1939 rendition of Lewis Allan's "Strange Fruit," a composition about lynching, is "…the most anguished and harrowing expression of protest against man's inhumanity to man that has ever been made in the form of vocal jazz." ²

Nicknamed "Lady Day" by musician Lester Young, Holiday often wore white gardenias fastened in her hair when performing. She worked with many jazz greats including Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and, in the film New Orleans, with Louis Armstrong and Kid Orey. She appeared at both small clubs and prestigious venues like Town Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater.

View of the Apollo Theatre Marquee, New York, New York, between 1946 and 1948.
Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz

Billie Holiday not only sang but arranged and composed. Her credits in the latter areas include "Don't Explain," "Fine and Mellow," "I Love My Man," and "God Bless' the Child." She died at age 44 on July 17, 1959 in New York City.

• Billie Holiday is one of several singers photographed by critic and photographer Carl Van Vechten included in Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964. Browse the Occupational Index to explore more of Van Vechten's work.
• Search the American Life Histories, 1936-1940 on the term Apollo for a description of Amateur Night and a spontaneous protest that took place during a live radio broadcast from the famous Harlem theater. In the words of the interviewee, "A Negro show would rather have the plaudits of an Apollo audience than any other applause. For the Apollo is the hard, testing ground of Negro show business, and approval there can make or break an act." Notice the outmoded language used to describe African Americans in this 1938 interview.
• Also, search American Life Histories, 1936-1940 on the term jazz for a variety of stories about the beginning of the jazz era.
• Examine the collection Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz. Search on the name of a favorite jazz artist (for example, Billie Holliday), or browse by name, subject, or venue. Don't miss the special presentation In His Own Words: Photos and Commentary by William Gottlieb.
• Search the Today in History Archive on the terms singer or jazz to find more American Memory material on musical legends including Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy, Ella Fitzgerald, and George Gershwin.

¹ Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1956).
² Billie Holiday, Immortal Sessions of Billie Holiday, Storyville, SLP 4002.