Billie Holiday Research Paper

One hundred and two years ago Eleanora Fagan Gough, better known as Billie Holiday, was born on April 7th, 1915. There is a discrepancy in where she was born; some accounts state that she was born in Baltimore; others state she was born in Philadelphia. Either way, she was born into extreme poverty. Her father, Clarence Holiday (a musician), left her as a young child, her mother and other relatives raised her in Baltimore, Maryland.
From a young age Holiday had proven to be strong-willed and rebellious. She often skipped school and got into trouble with the Juvenile Court. Holiday left school after only completing the 5th grade. She yearned to be a singer, she often sang along to songs by Bessie Smith, and admired records by Louis Armstrong. At 12 years of age she began hanging out with pimps who had connections with musicians in Baltimore. …show more content…
Each man that she had a relationship with introduced her to a new drug of choice, whether it was heavy drinking, opium, heroin, or marijuana; it all took a heavy toll on her voice. Her voice increasingly got raspier and although it was an interesting sound in the jazz scene, it was apparent the narcotics were getting the best of Holiday. Her music suffered and her records didn’t perform as well. Holiday still was looking for popularity so she wrote an autobiography in 1956 called “Lady Sings the Blues”. She once again was able to catch the attention of the public by sharing her personal, heart-wrenching story.
The quality of Billie’s voice fluctuated as she fell more and more heavily into narcotics. On May, 25th 1959 Billie gave the last performance of her life in New York City at the Phoenix Theater. Amazingly, regardless of the strain that years of substance abuse had on her voice, she sang beautifully and performed well, which was a rare occurrence for her. A few days later she was hospitalized and died of liver and heart failure, narcotics finally took her

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