Billie Holiday (24 page)

Introduction

Barack Obama heard in her music
: Barack Obama,
Dreams from My Father
(New York: Random House, 1995), p. 138;
The Starr Report
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1998), p. 707.

a columnist in the
Los Angeles Mirror
suggested
: Florabel Muir in 1950, quoted in David Brackett,
Interpreting Popular Music
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 53; see also pp. 51–53.

There is a powerful urge
: Happy songs do exist, but, as David Bowie once said, if you want to lose an audience, sing them a song about what a happy boy you are.

Our Lady of Sorrows
: Francis Davis, “Our Lady of Sorrows,”
Atlantic Monthly,
November 2000, pp. 104–8.

As Stanley Crouch put it
: Stanley Crouch, “The Invincible Sound of Swing: An Appreciation,” in José Muñoz and Carlos Sampayo,
Billie Holiday
(Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 1993), p. 52.

CHAPTER
ONE
:
The Book I:
Lady Sings the Blues

a persona of tragedy and sorrow
: Robert Belleret,
Piaf: Un mythe français
(Paris: Fayard, 2013).

She had certainly read
Lady Sings the Blues
: Ken Vail
, Lady Day's Diary: The Life of Billie Holiday, 1937–1959
(Surrey, UK: Castle Communications, 1996), p. 176.

Billie was staying with the Duftys
: Rhonda B. Sewell, “Biographer Remembers Billie Holiday's Greatness,”
Toledo Blade
, April 1, 2001, pp. B1–B3.

She was especially put off
: William Dufty, “The Legend of Lady Day, Part 1,”
East West Journal,
January 15–30, 1973, p. 8.

It was agreed that “no agent or broker”
: August 1, 1955, from the Lester Cowan and Ann Ronell “Trial of Billie Holiday” Collection, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries.

“She wouldn't be in the mood and would get angry”
: Sewell, “Biographer Remembers Billie Holiday's Greatness,” pp. B1–B3.

Dufty discovered that the material in it was rich
: Harriott himself later started a novel based on Holiday's life but died before it was finished.

“Mom was 13”
: Frank Harriott, “The Hard Life of Billie Holiday,”
PM
, September 2, 1945. During the research these numbers were changed but were still not accurate.

“
Miss Holiday's explosiveness”
: Quoted in “The True Story of Billie Holiday, Part 6,”
New York Post
, July, 26, 1959. Twenty-five years later the same paragraph would appear in a “Who Said That?” teaser quiz in a Simon and Schuster ad for
The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People
.

“
We have been working for a week now”
: Letter from William Dufty to Norman Granz, June 28, 1955, H. Dennis Fairchild archive.

the weaknesses of the autobiographies
: Christopher Harlos, “Jazz Autobiography: Theory, Practice, Politics,” in Krin Gabbard, ed.,
Representing Jazz
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 160.

she had been reading from the book
:
Letter from Dufty to Granz, H. Dennis Fairchild archive.

“
Dear Mr. Barker, Since my meeting”
: Ibid.

Even more ominously, McKay insisted
: Al Dunmore, “Billie Holiday Book Pulls Some Punches,”
Pittsburgh Courier
, December 29, 1956, p. A14.

Dufty reassured him
: Norman Granz to William Dufty, August 2, 1955; Dufty to Granz, August 2, 1955, and August 19, 1955, H. Dennis Fairchild archive.

Billie said, “I can't help it”
: William Pepper, “Banned Billie OK for Park?,”
World Telegraph
, July 30, 1957.

He opened his review by declaring
: Saunders Redding, “Book Review,”
Baltimore Afro-American
, March 15, 1957, p. A2.

“Well I don't know if you have been digging it”
: William Dufty, “The True Story of Billie Holiday, Part 1,”
New York Post
, July 20, 1959.

“
I never was a child”
: Ethel Waters with Charles Samuels,
His Eye Is on the Sparrow
(New York: Doubleday, 1951), p. 1.

CHAPTER
TWO
:
The Book II: The Rest of the Story

she wrote in the margin
: William Dufty in the BBC film
Reputations: Billie Holiday—Sensational Lady
, BBC TV 2, December 21, 2008.

four hundred dollars that he gave her
: Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe,
Really the Blues
(New York: Citadel Underground, Reissue Edition [1946], 2001). Early draft,
Lady Sings the Blues
, Robert O'Meally archive.

“He was supposed to be getting ready to marry”
: Robert O'Meally archive.

Kane
was a great picture
: Billie Holiday with William Dufty,
Lady Sings the Blues
(New York: Harlem Moon, 2006), pp. 106–7.

Holiday and Welles made a striking pair
: In 2000 Christine Vachon and Pam Koeffler of Killer Films announced they were developing
Fine and Mellow
, a film to be based on the Welles-Holiday affair; see
Movieline,
September 2000.

I remember the night Orson Welles came into the Onyx
: Early draft,
Lady Sings the Blues
, Robert O'Meally archive.

Holman performed the song in tan blackface
: Carla Kaplan,
Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Harlem Renaissance
(New York: Harper, 2013), pp. 40–44.

Holman was first known to Billie
: Holiday and Dufty,
Lady Sings the Blues
, pp. 59–60.

As Billie discreetly put it
: Ibid., p. 59.

He later claimed to have had an affair
: Christopher Wilson,
Dancing with the Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue
(New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000).

she was also deeply wedded to jazz
: Tallulah Bankhead, “The World's Greatest Jazz Musician,”
Ebony
, December 1952.

two women began sharing their show business miseries
: Joel Lowenthal,
Tallulah: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady
(New York: Harper, 2008), p. 409.

“Well, godammit darling”
: Robert O'Meally archive.

An account of the three-way phone call
: Ibid.

Tallulah followed up the call with a letter to Hoover
: FBI file on Billie Holiday. (For a time this file was for sale on Amazon.com!)

she wrote Bankhead
: Robert O'Meally,
Lady Day:
The Many Faces of Billie Holiday
(New York: Arcade, 1991), p. 124.

“I put in a couple of big words”
: George Monteiro,
Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996), p. 24.

Kirkpatrick recalled her
: Kai Erikson, ed.,
Encounters
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), p. ix; Kuehl manuscript, Rutgers University–Newark.

“the most extraordinary gift of phrasing”
: Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau, eds.,
Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), p. 104.

Louise Crane is not mentioned
: Holiday and Dufty,
Lady Sings the Blues
, pp. 97–100.

Crane's fascination with Holiday
: Fountain and Brazeau,
Remembering Elizabeth Bishop
,
p. 328.

ready to move away from the downtown slummers
: Marianne Moore,
Selected Letters
(New York: Penguin, 1998), p. 414.

When he learned that it was his cousin Louise
: John Hammond with Irving Townsend,
John Hammond on Record: An Autobiography
(New York: Penguin, 1982 [1977]), pp. 208–9.

Hammond said that Holiday never forgave him
: Ibid., p. 209.

wrote of Billie as “the bizarre deity”
: Elizabeth Hardwick,
Sleepless Nights,
new edition (New York: New York Review of Books Classics, 2001), p. 35.

“
She is very beautiful in a long white dress”
: Simone de Beauvoir,
America Day by Day,
Carol Cosman, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 44.

“
Ask him to take away that damn mustard”
: William Dufty, “The Legend of Lady Day, Part 1,”
East West Journal
2, no. 20, 1973, p. 9.

Billie loved children
: Alice Vrbsky, her maid, in the film
The Long Night of Lady Day
(1984).

Billie always asked him to bring his two-year-old son
: John Szwed,
So What: The Life of Miles Davis
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 64.

she attempted to adopt a child in Boston
: Attorney Earle Warren Zaidins, in the film
The Long Night of Lady Day
(1984).

“
These goddamn American doctors”
: William Dufty, “The Legend of Lady Day, Part 2,”
East West Journal
2, no. 21, 1973, p. 9.

When the lights went down for the first performance
: Gilbert Millstein, liner notes to
The Essential Billie Holiday: Carnegie Hall Concert Recorded Live
, Verve V-8410.

“erect and beautiful
; poised and smiling”
: Ibid.

heavily edited recording was made from the two concerts
:
The Essential Billie Holiday: Carnegie Hall Concert Recorded Live,
Verve V-8410.

Two reels of tape exist
“Billie Holiday—Carnegie Hall Concert Tape with Unreleased Content,” http://recordmecca.com/products-page/museum-quality-collectibles/billie-holiday-carnegie-hall-concert-tape-with-unreleased-content/. Many thanks to Jeff Gold of Recordmecca.

“the life and the art had become a kind of voyeuristic tragedy”
: Gerald Early, “Pulp and Circumstance: The Story of Jazz in High Places,” in Robert G. O'Meally, ed.,
The Jazz Cadence of American Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 393–430.

a series of eight articles in the
New York Post
: Letters to the Editor,
New York Post
, July 20, 1959.

articles in
Ebony
were particularly important
:
Ebony
, February 1951, pp. 22–24, 26–28.

“
When you're writing, straighten them out”
: Michael Levin, “Billie Holiday: ‘Don't Blame Show Biz,'”
Down Beat
, June 4, 1947, p. 1.

“
A lot of the real dicty people with talent”
: “Billie Talks About Fish and People,”
Los Angeles Mirror-News
, February 1957.

“
I hate these East Side clubs”
: “Billie Holiday Sounds Off Against Segregation in Gotham Nighteries,”
Baltimore Afro-American
, 1942.

“
It was slow, this attempt to climb clear”
:
Tan
, February,
1953.

“
I never felt inferior to anybody”
:
Confidential
, October 1959.

“
I'm not the suicide type”
: Billie Holiday, “Heroin Saved My Life,” unedited draft for
Confidential
, 1959, H. Dennis Fairchild archive.

Dufty said that when he visited her room
: Dufty in the BBC film
Reputations
.

this meant showing how the stigmatized women
: Coretta Pittman, “Black Women and the Trouble with Ethos: Harriet Jacobs, Billie Holiday, and Sister Souljah,”
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
37, no. 1 (Winter 2004),
pp. 56–61; Glen Coulter, “Billie Holiday, The Art of Jazz,”
Cambridge Review
, 1957, p. 124; Farah Jasmine Griffin,
If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery
(New York: Free Press, 2002); Kim L. Purnell, “Listening to Lady Day: An Exploration of the Creative (Re) Negotiation of Identity Revealed in the Life Narratives and Music Lyrics of Billie Holiday,”
Communication Quarterly
50, nos. 3 and 4 (Summer/Fall 2002), pp. 444–66.

CHAPTER
THREE
:
The Image: Film, Television, and Photography

The song's opening lines
: Gunther Schuller,
The Swing Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 530.