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Billie
Holiday
| "Lady
Day" taught herself to sing during her early teens in
Baltimore, Maryland, where she was brought up until moving
to New York in 1929. Factual inaccuracies and elements of
myth and exaggeration have clouded the picture of her formative
years despite the best efforts of researchers to present her
career story in a properly ordered manner. Not until Stuart
Nicholson's immaculately researched book appeared in 1995
was a detailed and reliable account of these years made available.
Nicholson's research revealed that some of the statements
made by the singer in her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings The
Blues, were true, despite having been dismissed as exaggeration
by other writers. Holidays" teenage parents, Sadie Harris
(aka Fagan) and probable father, Clarence Holiday, probably
never married, and it seems unlikely that they lived together
for any length of time. Holiday, a banjo and guitar player
is remembered principally for his work with Fletcher Henderson's
band in the early 30s. He remains a somewhat shadowy figure
who left his daughter in the care of Fagan or other relatives.
As a musician with touring bands in the later 20s Holiday
would often be away from home, and during the stay with Henderson,
which lasted until 1932, the guitarist severed connections
with the Fagans. However Billie proved hard to shake off after
joining her mother in New York's Harlem district, and when
rent on their apartment was overdue, she confronted Clarence
at the Roseland Ballroom - where Henderson's orchestra enjoyed
a lengthy "residency" -and extorted money by threatening
to show him up publicly. |
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