Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia in 1915 and active until her death in 1959, was one of the most influential vocalists in jazz history, known for behind-the-beat phrasing and deeply personal delivery, singing with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw orchestras and with her longtime collaborator, saxophonist Lester Young. Her 1939 recording of Strange Fruit, a song about the lynching of Black Americans, became one of the most powerful protest songs in American music, and her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, was published in 1956; she struggled with heroin addiction for much of her adult life and died at forty-four.