Around this time she borrowed her professional name Billie Holiday from screen actress Billie Dove. She made debuts in obscure Harlem nightclubs, sharing tips with other dancers and comedians on the bill. Young Eleanora soon joined her there and began showing up at jazz clubs to audition and sing with resident pianists. In 1929 Billie’s mother Sadie Fagan moved to New York in search of better jobs. In her early teens, the beginning part of her “apprenticeship” was spent singing along with the records of iconoclasts Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan Gough) grew up in jazz-soaked Baltimore of the 1920s. Today, Billie Holiday is remembered for her musical masterpieces, her songwriting skills, creativity and courageous views on inequality and justice. The evocative, soulful voice which she boldly put forth as a force for good, turned any song she sang into her own. Holiday’s complicated life and her genre-defining autobiography “Lady Sings the Blues” made her a cultural icon. More than 80 years after making her first recording Billie’s legacy continues to embody what is elegant and cool in contemporary music. She first rose to prominence in the 1930’s with a unique style that reinvented the conventions of modern singing and performance. Billie Holiday, born Apin Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a superstar of her day.

Billie sings the blues