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 | That Ole Devil Called Love | Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings |
2 | Now Or Never | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
3 | Please Tell Me Now | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
4 | Dream Of Life | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
5 | My Man (Mon Homme) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
6 | Some Other Spring | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
7 | Let's Dream In The Moonlight | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
8 | There Is No Greater Love | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
9 | Don't Explain (First Version) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
10 | Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)? | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
11 | Weep No More | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
12 | You've Changed | Columbia Jazz Masterpiece Sampler, Vol. 1 |
13 | Don't Explain | Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings |
14 | God Bless The Child | Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings |
15 | God Bless The Child | A Women's Voice |
16 | Our Love Is Different | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
17 | This Is Heaven To Me | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 2) |
18 | Deep Song | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |
19 | Under A Blue Jungle Moon | Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol. 7: 1938-1939 |
20 | Guilty (Previously Unissued Alternate) | The Complete Decca Recordings (Disc 1) |