Lady Day ....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLIE HOLIDAY

April 7, 1915 to July 17, 1959

Billie Holiday, jazz vocal icon ,changed the art of American pop vocals forever. Her vocal style strongly inspired by instrumentalists — pioneered a new way of manipulating wording and tempo, and also popularized a more personal and intimate approach to singing. To read her amazing and tragic bio go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Holiday

Strange Fruit," a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym "Lewis Allan" for the poem, which was set to music and performed at teachers' union meetings.

"If you copy, it means your're working without any feelings. No two people on earth are alike and it's got to be that way in music or it isnt music" - Billie Holiday

TRAVELIN LIGHT




FINE AND MELLO




1958

MY MAN - 1yr before her death of cirrhosis of the liver and heroin addiction.

Ms. Holiday is interred at the St. Raymonds Cemetary - Bronx, N.Y.

In 1972, Diana Ross portrayed her in a film that was loosely based on Lady Sings the Blues, the autobiography she co-authored with William Dufty, which earned Ross an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. In 1987, Billie Holiday was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1994, the United States Postal Service introduced a Billie Holiday postage stamp, she ranked #6 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock n' Roll in 1999, and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Over the years, there have been many recorded tributes to Billie Holiday, including "Angel of Harlem," a 1988 release by the group U2.