Café Society, 1939
The Greenwich Village club that seated Black and white customers alike. She sang there from 1939 and ended her sets with Strange Fruit.
Read more (Café Society, 1939)
Demo · Billie Holiday
Examples
Each theme has a site dedicated to the musician it is named after.
Pages
What a visitor can open on this site.
Theme
The world the site is drawn in. The content stays the same.
Day or night
The ground under everything: it changes the site the most.
Style
A colour and a typography made for each other.
Colour
In place of the style's accent, in every theme. Deeper by day, softer by night.
The theme's own
Cheek to CheekGeorgiaSummertimeApril in ParisMoonglowBluesetteSkylarkStardustMistyLullabyTenderlyEmbraceableHot HouseSalt PeanutsMantecaAnthropologyGiant StepsEpistrophyKo-KoA TrainBlue RondoGroovin' HighBirdlandRuby My DearSunny SideCaravanSugar HillBourbon StreetTobacco RoadTenor MadnessAutumn LeavesHoneysuckle RoseMoanin'St. Louis BluesMahogany HallHarlem NocturneSidewinderSpring Is HereGreen ChimneysGreen OnionsSweet BasilWillowJade VisionsGreen Dolphin StreetVermontThe PeacocksDolphin DanceCool Struttin'Blue in GreenBlue BossaFlamenco SketchesBlue SkiesAll BluesBlues for AliceSo WhatKind of BlueBlue TrainBlue LouRound MidnightBlue MonkIvorySepia PanoramaBlack and TanBlack CoffeeSmokeStormy WeatherMood IndigoMidnight SunNocturneMoody's MoodLush LifeDark Eyes
Hero
How the page opens.
Skip to content
Singer · Voice · New York, USA Frank Sinatra“The Way I Look at Race”, Ebony, July 1958 James BaldwinInterview, 1973, in Conversations with James Baldwin (1989) Studs TerkelTalking to Myself, 1977, on hearing her in 1956
Billie Holiday
Lady Day. She sang a little behind the beat, like a horn, and the songs came out as hers.
A Few Words
Billie Holiday (1915-1959) was born Eleanora Fagan and grew up in Baltimore. She came to New York as a girl, sang for tips in the clubs of Harlem, and was heard there by the producer John Hammond, who recorded her with Benny Goodman in 1933.
With the pianist Teddy Wilson and the saxophonist Lester Young she made the small-group records of the 1930s that singers still learn from; Young named her Lady Day, and she named him Pres. She sang with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, and in 1939, at Café Society in Greenwich Village, she first sang Strange Fruit.
She phrased like a horn player and changed the melody when it suited the words. Her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, came out in 1956; Lady in Satin, recorded with strings, in 1958. She died in New York the next year, at forty-four.
Records
On Screen
Kind Words
Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.
Billie Holiday was a poet. She gave you back your experience.
Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of the self.
Collaborations
Lady Day and Pres
The small-band sides she made with Lester Young and Teddy Wilson between 1937 and 1941.
Read more (Lady Day and Pres)
Carnegie Hall
She sold it out in 1948, and again in November 1956, when passages of her autobiography were read between the songs; the second night was released as The Essential Billie Holiday.
Read more (Carnegie Hall)
Snapshots
Among roses, in Kodachrome, 23 March 1949. Carl Van Vechten In her dressing room with Mister, her boxer, New York, 1946. William P. Gottlieb In black satin, 23 March 1949. Carl Van Vechten At the Downbeat, New York, 1947. William P. Gottlieb The same sitting, with the bouquet. Carl Van Vechten
Elsewhere
Book an evening
Clubs, dinners, weddings and private parties. Tell us the date, the room and how many guests; we answer within two days.