Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 - July 17, 1959; born Eleanora Fagan Gough in Baltimore, Maryland, USA), also known as Lady Day, was an American singer generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time, alongside Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. She sang with jazz greats like Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw - but it was her voice that was said to dominate the music of many others. Holiday was working for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to a song entitled Strange Fruit, which began as a poem about the lynching of a black man written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym ???Lewis Allen??? for the work. The poem was set to music and performed at teachers??? union meetings, where it was eventually heard by the manager of Cafe Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday. Holiday performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939, a move that - by her own admission - left her fearful of retaliation. Holiday later said that the imagery in ???Strange Fruit??? reminded her of her father???s death, and that this played a role in her persistence to perform it. She approached Columbia about recording the song, but was refused due to the subject matter of the song. She arranged to record it with Commodore (Milt Gabler???s alternative jazz label) in 1939. She would
| 1 | Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)? | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
| 2 | Don't Explain | Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings |
| 3 | Baby I Don't Cry Over You | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
| 4 | Don't Explain (First Version) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
| 5 | Baby, I Don't Cry Over You (Previously Unissued Al | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
| 6 | The Blues Are Brewin' | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
| 7 | Please Tell Me Now | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
| 8 | My Man (Mon Homme) (Previously Unissued Alternativ | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
| 9 | You're So Desirable | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
| 10 | No More (Alternate) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
| 11 | God Bless The Child | Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings |
| 12 | More Than You Know | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
| 13 | My Man (Mon Homme) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
| 14 | Girls Were Made To Take Care Of Boys | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
| 15 | My Sweet Hunk O' Trash (With Louis Armstrong) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
| 16 | Baby Get Lost | Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings |
| 17 | Long Gone Blues | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
| 18 | You Can't Lose A Broken Heart (With Louis Armstron | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
| 19 | Solitude (Previously Unissued Alternative) | The Complete Decca Recordings |
| 20 | Don't Explain | Verve Remixed |