Rev Left Radio - Lady Sings the Blues: The Life and Art of Billie Holiday

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

In this episode, Breht is joined by Tiffani to discuss the life, art, and politics of Billie Holiday! We discuss her childhood trauma, her victimization by the War on Drugs, what made her music so unique, and much more!  Follow Tiffani on Twitter Follow Tiffani on Insta Outro Music: 'Lady Sings The Blues' by Billie Holiday ----- Please Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode, I have my friend Tiffany on to talk about the life and legacy of the one-and-only Billy Holiday. Billy Holiday is somebody who I've long had a lot of affection for, her art and her music, and I've always wanted to do an episode on her on this show, sort of in the tradition of some of the other musical episodes we've done. and I knew that Tiffany would be the perfect guest to have on to talk about this, and she did not disappoint. So throughout, you'll hear clips from Billy Holliday's music, and we'll link to those in the show notes so you can more easily find those

and just hopefully become a fan of Billy, who is this giant in blues and jazz and music in general and in American history. So without further ado, let's get into this wonderful episode with Tiffany on the life and legacy of Billy Holiday. So hi everybody, I'm Tiffany, a 25-year-old born and raised on the east side of Atlanta, Georgia. I'm a graduate of Florida A&M University, which is a historically black university in Tallahassee, Florida. I consider myself a student of abolition, a student of communism, and a student of pan-Africanism. I'm also a landscape and nature photographer and a long-time listener of Rev Left.

So I'm super happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me on, Brett. I actually haven't been in college in a while. And so this is my first time really digging my heels into studying a particular historical figure. And it's just been super enjoyable. So I'm super excited to be here. Awesome. Yeah, that's wonderful.

And I was really happy to be able to invite you on after you being such a longtime supporter and listener of the show. I really always appreciated that. And so when I look for guests, I'm thinking, like, you know, who have the people been that have really know what we're about? And that was you. And so I'm really happy to be able to talk with you after basically years of you being a Rev-F listener, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. Yeah. It's probably been about four years or three or four years at this point. So as long as we've existed pretty much. Yes. And then also I love your photography because, you know, we're friends on Instagram, so I get to see firsthand that stuff. It's wonderful.

Thank you so much. For sure. But today we're here. But today we're here to talk about the one and only Billy Holiday. Billy Holiday has been a looming figure in my mind for a while, definitely somebody that I've wanted to cover on Rev Left for a very long time, particularly after the Nina Simone episode was so well received. I wasn't sure how people would take us sort of diverting from a purely political,

more into the music and cultural scene, but people loved it. And so I assume this will be very similar. But first and foremost, as a way to start, especially for those who may know very little to nothing about, Billy Holiday. Can you give us sort of a bird's eye view historically of who she was and why she's a figure that's worth studying today? Absolutely. So Billy Holiday affectionately known as Lady Day, which was a name given to her by her very dear friend and jazz great Lester Young was a famous black jazz and swing vocalist. She was actually born Eleanor Fagan, although this is a bit

disputed, as it's rumored that her birth certificate says that her name is Eleanor Harris. She was born in 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as an only child born to teenage parents and spent most of her life growing up in Baltimore and spent her later years, her teenage years, actually growing up with her mother, Sadie Fagan in New York, who had moved there for financial reasons to find better work. And in the meantime, her father, who she was a bit estranged from Clarence Holiday, became a fairly successful jazz musician. So she did already have some music ties in her family. According to her autobiography, Billy grew up listening to and falling in love with the blues at a really young age. And she mentioned listening to the likes of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong and just being very infatuated with the genre.

So much so that she would actually seek out work that would allow her to listen to the blues. And she ended up working in Alistine's brothel at a pretty young age. scrubbing marble floors and steps because Alice's place was one of the few spots that Billy knew of that had a Victrola record player that was constantly playing the blues. So, yeah, upon just doing some research about her, I started to gather the fact that Billy had a pretty traumatic childhood. It was marked with poverty and abuse, sexual violence, and even abandonment. And it was pretty obvious the more I learned about her that all of her experiences she had growing up kind of colored her adulthood and even her art.

So that's just an aside. But in 1933 at the age of 18, Billy was discovered by famed music producer John Hammond while she was singing at a club. And this particular job that she had at this club, she kind of stumbled upon. So it was pretty remarkable that John Hammond found her there. And in that same year, 1933, she was given the opportunity to record her first record. And over the years, Billy became increasingly successful as a jazz vocalist and as a public persona in general. She kind of ran in circles with a lot of very famous folks in Hollywood. And one of her most notable moments as an artist was her decision to sing Strange Fruit, which is a very popular song that I would say a lot of people know about.

It was actually a poem originally written by Abel Miracle under his pseudonym Louis Allen about lynchings of black folks that were still happening across the country at the time. Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood on leaves and blood at the road. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, set of magnolia sweet and fresh then the sudden smell of burning flesh here is a fruit for the for the rain together for the wind to suck

for the sun to rat for the tree to drop He is a strange and bitter cry. Folks seem to be very fascinated by Lady Day's boldness, her fiery, tell it like it is style of communication and just her overall kindness out of all the documentaries that I watched and the couple of biographies that I read, the people who knew her personally just kind of always talked about how much of a light she was in their lives. So that was something really

heartwarming to learn about her. But on the same token, on the other side of the coin, I guess, people also became very fascinated with her romantic relationships, which were notoriously tumultuous and abusive and her struggles with addiction. So in 1959, Billy Holiday ended up dying of drug and alcohol abuse induced to complications. So her life ended pretty tragically, which is something I'm sure we'll get into more a bit later. But yeah, that's kind of just the bird's eye view of who she is, a very short biography of who Billy Holiday is. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think you can disconnect her struggles with addiction from her childhood trauma, which we'll definitely get to.

into she definitely grew up working poor she had really no formal training in music she couldn't even like read music right so it was really like this organic talent um that she had and i definitely want to talk about the addiction and her being hounded by the u.s government i think on her death bed i think she was even handcuffed to her to her bed um by the police for drug stuff which we'll definitely get into later because that not only marks an important part of billy's life but the drug war in America more broadly. But before we get into that, I just kind of want to know, like, how much did you know about Billy before we planned this episode? And what aspects of her life as you studied her sort of surprised you the most to learn about? Yeah. So honestly,

before you reached out to me, the only thing I really knew about Billy Holiday was that she was a singer, obviously. And I had heard a few songs here and there throughout my life of hers, her very popular songs, like Blue Moon and summertime and, of course, Strange Fruit. And I knew that she sang Strange Fruit. So in turn, I think I had this idea of her that she was this very political artist. And I came to find out that that wasn't totally true. And upon further investigation, I actually realized that the only version of Strange Fruit that I knew was Nina Simone's version. So I knew very little about Billie Holiday, honestly. And me finding out that that it was actually Nina Simone's version of Strange Fruit that I knew really led to a whole other realization about Billy's vocal communication style, which I'll explain a little bit more about later. In terms of aspects of her life, though, that surprised me, I would say that, you know, you and I briefly talked about reading her autobiography

and just how deeply troubling some of the experiences of her childhood were. Like I mentioned earlier, Billy experienced a lot of trauma at a really young age, beginning with being emotionally and physically abused by her aunt while she was living with her and her two cousins. And at the age of 10, Billy was actually raped by her neighbor. And as a result, she was sent to a Catholic reformatory for delinquency, which was just absolutely disturbing to read in and of itself. And her experience at that Catholic reformatory really marked,

I feel like, the introduction of a lifetime of being just kind of enmeshed in the parcel system. In her autobiography, she describes a moment at the reformatory where she was locked in a room with a girl who had died earlier that day. And so instances like that just really shocked me, but it also gave me some context to how Billy's life ended up panning out. So I was also surprised to learn that she wasn't explicitly political, like I mentioned earlier. Billy spoke about racial injustices and instances of sexism on a very personal level. But she was aware like a lot of black women and femme folk are as we navigate through life and have our experiences in this society. But she wasn't this political artist that the momentary snapshot of her

performing strange fruit would have one thing. And despite the fact that she wasn't necessarily this radical artist, she still experienced being silenced by the government. So during the time, of her performing strange fruit and going on tour and performing the song, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was previously the Department of Prohibition, but obviously at this point, prohibition

had ended. So that's how it became the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. But the commissioner, Harry Anslinger, who knew that Billy Holiday was using drugs at the time. He actually sent a letter to Holiday asking that she ceased performance

of the song, and a pun her refusal, he ordered that she be tracked and essentially framed for buying and using heroin. So like I said, he knew she was using drugs. He didn't want her performing this deeply political song anymore. And so he kind of used that to hang over her head and frame her. So she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. And after she was released in 1948, she lost her cabaret license due to her conviction and was unable to perform in clubs and bars where she made most of her earnings. And out of all the biographies that I read and then the documentaries that I watched, a lot of them marked this time as kind of the beginning of the end for Billie Holiday

because she was, like I said, no longer able to perform on this circuit that she had performed at or won since the inception of her career and this is how she made her money and so she was kind of pigeonholds and blackballs essentially and like I said it was kind of the beginning of the of the end of her career for her and her life really absolutely I think that that early childhood trauma was one of the things that not only surprised me but it was deeply disturbing to me and not only was she a victim of of the big sort of sexual assault with that 40 years old neighbor, but she was a victim of incestuous rape at a younger age by one of her older male cousins.

And then throughout her life, she was also basically sex trafficked before even the age of 16. And the trauma of that was profound. And I don't see how anybody could go through those things and not be, you know, deeply traumatized in various ways. And then the other aspect of this is you're 100% correct about not really being a particularly radical artist, but she was a black woman. And in a white supremacist patriarchal society, you know, just her having a voice is already sort of subversive in and of itself. But, you know, the singing of strange fruit, the emotion behind it, the sort of social stir that it caused was certainly sort of a highlight of her being engaged with something like politics.

And she even talked about how, you know, reading the poem of Strange Fruit as she was contemplating starting to sing it, she thought about her dad who died from a lung disease. and he was the day before he died he went to a hospital to try to get help but it was a white hospital they refused to treat a black man they sent him home and he died that night so this song and the lyrics it conjured up that personal loss of for billy and then she was also obviously quickly aware of its social implications by the fact that this absolute asshole harry anslinger um confronted her about it literally told her to stop singing it um and and and enslinger was by every account count, a hardcore white supremacist, even by the standards of 1920s and 1930s America, which is really saying something. He looked up to people like McCarthy, you know, which we all know as a rabid anti-communist. And two things that Harry Anslinger hated more than anything was people of color, specifically black people and Latino people. And he had a deep-seated sort of hatred and resentment toward people who were addicted. I guess he grew up around a neighbor who had a morphine addiction and really saw addicts as pathetic people who needed to be put in their

place and punished for their addiction. So when you combine those two things into the form of Billy Holiday as a black woman and somebody struggling with addiction due to these traumas, Harry Anslinger really put the full force of his agency and the U.S. government into harassing her, as you said, hiring somebody to infiltrate, become her friend for a year, which, you know, she had this deep relationship with this guy who was an informant. and was digging dirt on her and eventually turned her over. And that was also just another layer of trauma. If you have somebody who's so close to you, being a narc and turning you over to the state.

So her entire life, her career, really, she was being harassed by the U.S. government. And Harry Anslinger was sort of the spearhead of that. Absolutely. Yeah, that was, I mean, just reading about that was, it was shocking. But at the same time, it's kind of what you can expect from, one, that time period. and then, too, learning more about Harry Ansinger and just about his ideology and, you know, the fact that he hated people who were addicted to drugs. And then on top of that was a flaming racist. He just, I was reading some quotes that he made about jazz musicians being black and how that music just reminded him of like a zoo and just very, just like you said, very racist. even for that time period and just i feel like billy had like three marks against herself in his

book just based on her being black a jazz singer and then addicted to drugs as well so yeah her experience with him was just awful absolutely absolutely and can you talk a little bit more let's dive a little deeper into the racism and sexism aspects of her life because god knows she faced it all can you talk about that and and how you think that sort of shaped her and her art so um the time period of the 1920s through the 1950s was of course characterized by one of the more brutal in terms of racial injustices post-slavery. And in her autobiography, Billy actually talked about a number of experiences that she had directly with racism. And one of those experiences that stood out to me was when she was on tour in 1936 with Artie Shaw's band, which was an all-white band.

She talked about the fact that while she was on the road with this particular group, she wasn't allowed to use the restroom at pit stops that they would make. And she wasn't typically allowed to get food from the restaurants that they would stop at. She mentioned having to go like hours and hours without using the bathroom and eventually just kind of deciding to go on the side of the road. And when they would stop for food, she would ask her bandmates to kind of like sneak her plate to the bus. And there was even a situation where the band had gotten into a brawl with a restaurant owner that was spewing hate speech at Billy, of course. And so instances like that would just, I feel like, bring someone to the realization from a firsthand experience that they're

seen as less than human and really less than animal, if we're being honest. And I feel like Billy talked about her experiences touring with this particular band in a way that made it very obvious that she knew, she knew what was going on. It was very, it was presented very matter-of-factly in her autobiography, which is pretty heartbreaking, in my opinion. But it's the reality of the time. She also talked about touring with an all-black band, the Count Basie Orchestra, in 1937, so the following year. And the fact that she, as a light-skinned woman, was seen as this sort of dainty and vulnerable being and someone who was closer to white womanhood because they were actually touring in the South at the time. And because of this, they actually made her darken her skin or

use blackface in order to appease a crowd of folks who didn't want to see a white woman or a white woman adjacent person with an all black male band. And so I thought that was very, very interesting and just kind of speaks to colorism and it speaks to just how deeply rooted that sort of white supremacy is so much so that a black woman had to darken her skin to appear further away from white womanhood, I guess, in order to make the crowd comfortable, the crowd of white patrons comfortable. And so that was very interesting to read. But another experience that she really spoke to that I feel like shaped Billy's outlook on life was something that you just mentioned, actually, and that was her father's death. And just to go a little bit deeper

in it, in March of 1937, Billy's father, Clarence Holiday, felt ill with a lung disorder. And so this disorder was likely caused by a mustard gas exposure that he faced while serving in World War I. At the time, Clarence Holiday was touring in Texas. Like I said, he was a jazz musician. So he was touring at the time, and upon falling ill, he was refused care at a whites-only hospital in the Dallas area. He finally found a veteran's hospital that agreed to care for him, but by this time, he had actually developed a fatal case of pneumonia. And in her autobiography, Billy mentions the fact that the song, Strange Fruit, like you mentioned, Brett, reminded her of how her father died. And this went to show that Billy was very well aware of the fact that her father was lynched,

despite not being hung from a tree like the murders described in the song. And reading that realization of hers for me was particularly haunting and eerie just based on how Billy's life ended. And I personally believe that if Billy had been given proper treatment for her drug addiction, that she could have lived a longer life. And the reality is that she wasn't giving proper treatment. And that was essentially because obviously there's an anti-black medical system. and she was left to rot, and black women suffering from addiction aren't seen as redeemable or revivable, and they're actually seen as irredeemable, disposable, and really a nuisance to society. And so, Billy died suffering from withdrawal symptoms after doctors were ordered by the Federal Bureau

of Narcotics to end their methadone treatment. And at the time, she was actually being monitored. Her door was manned by two cops, and she was handcuffed to her bed. And this was a couple of days after cops had found heroin in her hospital room. So that's how Billie Holiday's life ended. And that is why just reading about her realization about her father's death is just super eerie to me. But in regards to the sexism that she experienced, I noticed that Billy was often described as one of the guys. And I noticed this in a number of the documentaries and biographies that I engaged with.

And I feel like this likely had a lot to do with her weight and her refusal to participate in this performance of ladylike womanhood. A lot of the people closest to her talked about how she cussed like a sailor. She didn't quote unquote watch her wage and just things that would. She fistfought people? Yes, exactly. She would get into fights. She just wasn't engaging with this womanhood that a lot of the people of that day and age were really hung up on. a lot of the women, obviously, because for several reasons.

But, yeah, that just wasn't her personality. And I just think there's a lot to be said about desirability here, honestly. Because in these same documentaries and biographies, there were folks that described Billy as this highly sexual or even, I guess, promiscuous woman. I kind of hate that word, but that's how they described her. And so the conclusion can be made that she was obviously a desirable woman to men, and that was likely connected to her talent and her status, her lighter skin and her forward sensuality,

but there was also an obvious confliction for them. And I just believe, like, womanhood means something a bit different as a black woman. And we aren't necessarily perceived as being this innately feminine being. And if we're fat, that perception is heightened even further, that we're even further away from womanhood. And this is just how a number of folks saw Billy, I feel like, and why they described her as, one of the guys type of people. And I feel like at a more insidious end of that same spectrum, people saw her as this being who wanted to be

and even enjoyed being abused physically and emotionally by partners. That distance from womanhood in people's, as people perceived her, I feel like, is what contributed to their understanding or their feelings that she enjoyed abuse. And I just feel like her womanhood was a bit stolen from her in the same way that childhood

a lot of times stolen from black boys and girls and this probably has I feel like if I dig a bit deeper there could be probably a queer analysis to this now that I'm saying this out loud but yeah the reality is that Billy did end up being abused by many of if not all of the men that she claimed openly

as her partners and Billy ended up being addicted to drugs and alcohols well. And I think that given the circumstances of her life, these realities just kind of makes sense. Racism, sexism, backed by all of the systems at birth and maintained, these beliefs are impenetrable, honestly, in this society. And I feel like Billy transmuted her life experiences through her voice and through her art. When you listen to Billie Holiday Singh, you can feel everything. And she has such a sensual and intimate sound to her voice of

haunting sound, just lingering, and all of these characteristics really brought to life the songs that she sang. So one of the books that I actually engaged with for this episode was Dr. Angela Davis's book entitled Blues Legacy in Black feminism, and she discussed the fact that Billy wasn't a songwriter, and at the time, most songwriters were actually white men. So these popular songwriters would give their throwaway songs to black singers, of course. And so a lot of Billy songs, if you look at the lyrics are a bit elementary, but her delivery is just so captivating despite the lyrics. And you can just feel, like I said, her experiences that she went through throughout life and her encounters with racism and sexism and heartbreak and joy and

love and fears just through every word that she sings. And this is despite her lyrical content being a bit lacking. Yeah, no, I think it's fascinating that point about desirability and colorism, I think was 100% on point. And, you know, the fact that these popular songwriters would sort of give their throwaway songs to black singers, it trickles down to Nina Simone, who was like a generation after Billy Holliday, and they sang many of the same songs. Like, you know, strange fruit you heard first from Nina Simone, as did I, but that originally was sung by Billy Holliday, and there's like, Mr. Porgy, and there's lots of songs like

that that were sung like that. And then, yeah, I also totally agree with this framing. I even heard one, I don't think he's an academic on some document. I can't remember exactly what it was, but basically suggest or outright say that Billy was a masochist that she got in relationships because she personally enjoyed pain. And I think from that level, all the way to the way she was treated for her drug addiction, all of it separates her from her earlier trauma and the cycles of trauma and the sort of sense of unworthiness that especially people who are sexually abused as child carry throughout their life. and nobody ever stopped to think about helping her, about getting her the help that she needed to overcome that trauma in any way. It was just she was further penalized,

not just for being traumatized, but then for reacting to that traumatization in a very human way, which so many of us do in various ways, which is to become an addict of one sort or another and try to escape that pain through any way that you can. I have people in my family who are very much fit that description as well. I'm sure most of us do have people in our families like that. And so the taboo is shifting, and I think we're getting better at that, but still when the main victims of a certain drug are perceived to be people of color, there's one way that white America treats it.

And when it's white people, it's a different way. You can see that difference when it comes to the crack epidemic versus the opioid epidemic where you have, you know, during the 80s, the crack epidemic, you know, you had things like welfare queens and Reagan, you know, thinly veiled dog whistles and racism and shitting on these people. who desperately needed help and who lived in outrageous conditions. But then we see today the opioid epidemic, which tends to hit white people a little harder. And even Trump himself, the arch-white supremacist of this particular era, gets up and waxes sort of sympathetic about the plight of these addicts. And so the color line when it comes to addiction and how it's viewed and how it's treated has always been differential in this society and it still is to this very day. Absolutely. And just to add one to that, I was going to say, I feel like, like you said,

said where our perception is changing a bit, I feel like, in terms of addiction and just reading about how she was hounded by the Bureau of Narcotics. And that just, it just doesn't make sense to me from the standpoint that I'm looking at it from as somebody who's a bit more informed now about addiction and whatnot. It just doesn't make sense that you would pursue someone to be put away in jail for using drugs and not give them the help that they need. She wasn't trafficking drugs she wasn't selling drugs like she was just an addict and so instead of giving her help they locked her away and you know that still happens today to a lot of people but it's just absolutely absurd and it really makes no sense when you when you sit back and think about it but yeah absolutely

so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about her art and specifically you know obviously her song so I just like to ask this question when we're dealing with with the musician of any sort which is like which of her songs do you personally like and why yeah so Billy, I feel like, has just an extensive collection of material, so it's kind of a hard question to answer. But personally, if I had to choose three of her songs, they'd be Taint Nobody's Business If I Do, which was released in 1949. I Love You, Porgy, which was released in 1951, and Body and Soul, which was released in 1957. So Taint Nobody's Business If I Do was originally sung by Bessie Smith in 1923, and this just kind of speaks to you mentioning the fact

that black musicians kind of passed down songs. But Billy's version of this song was released in 1949, and it's completely different from Bessie Smith's in delivery, and she actually changed some of the lyrical content as well. But there's just this overtly jazzy element to it, which kind of contrasts Bessie's more bluesy performance of it. Billy was able to to kind of throw her voice in a way that feels like she's performing lines as an actress in a movie almost. And there's just this level of sass

and command in her voice that along with the lyrics, which can basically be summed up as her telling people to mind her business, mind their business. That's just, I just feel like it's just very inspiring and sexy. And one of the lines in the songs is if I go to church on Sunday,

then cabaret all day on Monday, ain't nobody's business if I do. And I just enjoy her, really speaking to the complexity of womanhood and even just the complexity of being a human being and some of the contradictions. And yeah, it's just a very enjoyable song. And this song was recorded and released at what could be considered the height of Billy's career. And so this is just something that's very obvious from a vocal standpoint when you listen to it. She just sounds very confident and youthful and it's just really enjoyable.

There ain't nothing I can do or nothing I can say that folks don't criticize me, but I'm going to do just as I want to any way. and don't care just what people say if I should take a notion to jump into the ocean ain't nobody's business if I do If I go to church on Sunday, then cabaret all the day Monday, ain't nobody's business if I do.

But I love you, Porgy, which is the second song that I would choose, is such a vocal flex, honestly. I feel like Billy sings the hell out of that song. It was a song that was actually written by George Gershwin and the lyrics were written by Ira Gershwin. And this was a song for the opera called Porgy and Bess. And this opera actually debuted on Broadway in 1935. Billy Holiday's version of this song was released in 1951 as a pop song.

But I enjoy it so much because it's a song that got sort of passed down by many of the greats. So this is another one of those songs. where black artists just didn't have, we're very limited in their song selections, but from Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horn, Nina Simone, and even Whitney Houston at the height of her career, all sang the song.

But I learned that this particular opera, Porgy and Bess, was incredibly culturally significant and quite controversial at the time. It was an opera slash musical, and it was created by George and Ira Gershman, as I mentioned, and the Gershman's were the sons of a Russian Jewish immigrant and Porgy and Best was about a black couple living in Charleston, South Carolina. So there was kind of a disconnect between the, I guess, reality of the writers of this particular opera and the characters that they wrote about. And so the musical was actually written in a dialect that was supposed to be representative of the way that black folks in the South communicated, which some people like Harry Belafonte, for example, publicly criticized. And so, the music was actually written in a dialect that was supposed to be representative of the way that black folks in the South communicated, which some people like Harry Belafonte, for example,

as highly offensive, which makes sense because I feel like when you try to write in like a black dialect, it could get real problematic real quick. But another element that made Porky and Best culturally significant as it became was the fact that the Gershwins and their all-white team made it a priority to only cast black classically trained artists in the roles for the opera. So this was actually pretty rare and incredible for the time, even for a production that was about black folks because in this day and age, it was super common to have white actors and singers actually portray black people. So this was obviously done through

black face. But anyways, I love you, Porgy, just simply being a great love song and having the culturally significant backing of being a part of Porgy and Best is kind of why I like it and why it's at the top of my list of songs that I enjoy of hers. I love you, Poggy, don't let him take me. Don't let him handle me with his hot hands. If you can keep me, I want to stay here with you forever. I've got my man Someday I know he is coming

Back to call me He's going to handle me And hold me so It's going to be like dying Poggy, when he calls me. But when he calls me, but when he calls, I know I'll have to go.

I love you, Poggy. Don't let him take me. Don't let him handle me And drive me mad If you can keep me I want to stay With you forever I've got my

And the last one, body and soul, which was released in 1957, just two years before Billy's death, was a song that really stood out to me because of her voice. Her voice sounds very aged and a bit worn, but I didn't necessarily take this as a bad thing when I listened. And if you really listened to the song, after listening to one of her earlier songs, you can definitely hear a clear difference. And I feel like there's a beauty about that. Billy was really heavily criticized later on in her career due to how worn her voice had become. And this was after years of drug abuse and alcohol abuse, taking its obvious toll. But Billy lost the little vocal range that she had. And it was very apparent in this particular song.

But that limited vocal range, I feel like, adds this level of depth to the performance. And lyrically body and soul is about a lonely woman, someone who spends her days longing for connection. and reconnection, and the desperation in the lyrics highlighted and really emphasized by what sounds like desperation in Billy's voice, a desperation for what once was hers. I think so much of what makes blues and jazz and the space that Billy occupies somewhere in between so enjoyable is how deeply human it is. And there's just something so human and relatable about this sort of longing and deep desperation for human interaction, human touch, love, and everything that comes with being in the physical presence

of someone you care about. Billy's delivery of this song is just super believable and a lot of that believability could be attributed to the fact that at this point in time in her life, Billy was genuinely lonely. She had been abandoned by a lot of the people she had been close with over the years

because of her addiction to drugs and alcohol. A lot of folks just wanted to distance themselves. And so this song being about loneliness just fits right into her, her reality and you can feel it in every word that she sings. My days have grown so lonely for you I cry

for you nearly why haven't you seen it I'm all for you, body and soul I spend my days in longing You know it's you That I am longing Oh, I tell you I'm meaning I'm all for you body and soul

I can't believe it it's hard to conceive it that you throw away romance are you pretending It looks like the ending Unless I can have one more chance To prove dear My life wreck you're making

You know I'm yours For just the taking Oh, I tell you I mean it, I'm all for you, body, and soul. So yeah, those are my, I would say my top three of hers, as of now. For sure. Those are great choices. Definitely with some overlap of some of my favorite songs. I would definitely, I mean, Strange Fruit has to be added in here. Lady sings the Blue is wonderful. Fine and Mellow also just hits a little different and I love it. But you're absolutely right to point out in her voice this, in many songs too, this deep longing, this deep yearning that transcends culture and race and speaks to something deeply human within all of us, which is why I think she's so accessible and so loved as to. time goes by through many different cultures with many people of any different backgrounds. I think that's a testament to how deeply human her art was. One song that stands out to me that hit me and actually I think it was the first time I was

ever introduced to Billy Holiday was gloomy Sunday. And I can't remember. It was about 10 years ago. I was depressed for one reason or another. I can't remember if it was like one of my more clinical depression eras or if it was like around this time where I was really in love with somebody who did not. reciprocate and was moving out of the state and I was in a mess of an emotional state and I remember driving around and like parking outside of this park and just sitting in my car just like sort of

feeling sorry for myself in various ways and turned I just turned on like NPR or something and it happened to be like their blues hour or their jazz hour or something and just out of my speakers as I was feeling all these feelings came gloomy Sunday and it just it just was hypnotic gloomy my hours are slumberless dear is the shadows i live with are numberless little white flowers will never waken you not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you angels have no thought of ever returning you would they be angry if i thought of joining you gloomy sunday Glow me a Sunday with shadows I spend it all, my heart and I have decided to end it all. Soon there'll be candles and prayers that are said I know.

Let them know that I'm glad to go Death is no dream For in death I'm caressing you With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you Gloomay Sunday Dreaming. I was only dreaming. I was only dreaming. I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart. darling i hope that my dream never haunted you my heart is telling you how much i wanted you gloomy sunday

even had a cell phone and shit like so i didn't even i didn't know how to find out who the artist was or who the song was so there's a couple years after that where i i had this song in my head that i loved and um i couldn't figure out who sang it where it came from right it was just like one song played in a row of songs and i never tuned in long enough to hear if they mentioned who it was and uh eventually i did through accidents um figure out that it was billy holladay and i was a fan of hers ever since then but gloomy sunday just it has its own little cultural cropping up around it as well. Like people will talk about how many people committed suicide to gloomy Sunday,

that it has this sort of like some people would even take it so far as to be superstitious and say that there's a curse to the song. So it has this sort of cultural mythology surrounding it because of, I think, the deep depths, the humanness and the real sort of authority that she spoke with and saying with when it came to depression and the contemplation of suicide. And so that song has always stuck out to me as a particularly heart-wrenching, deeply emotive song that no matter how many times I listen to it, it still hits like the first time I listen to it, you know? Absolutely. That's in my top five as well of her.

She just, she just has such a powerful voice. And that song makes it super obvious that that's true. Totally. All right. Well, let's move on and talk about some of her influences. And importantly, because this is sort of controversial. What genre Billy's music would be considered as? So do you have any thoughts on either of those?

Yeah, yeah. This is kind of probably a long answer. But in her autobiography and interviews throughout her career, Billy mentions being inspired and influenced most directly by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Billy said that very often that she wanted her voice to sound the way that Louis Armstrong's trumpet sounded. So she wanted her voice to sound very instrumental. And as I mentioned earlier, Billy loved the blues, and she loved instrumentation and picked up a lot of her sonic style as a kid listening to the popular blues records of Smith and Armstrong. So from a musically genealogical standpoint, Billy Holiday descends directly from the legends, the greats, Gertrude Maraney and Bessie Smith.

Marrani and Bessie Smith were the architects of blues and part of the first generation of blues singers to record songs. Marani was born in 1886 in Columbus, Georgia, and Bessie Smith in 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So these women were also a part of the first or second generation of black folks in the South, born after the widespread abolition of slavery. So upon reading Dr. Angela Davis's book that I mentioned earlier, Blues Legacies in Black feminism, the weight of this fact truly began to dawn on me. Dr. Davis mentions the fact that Bessie Smith and Marani were in the generation of black women who, for the first time, were given some level of freedom and autonomy in regards to consenting to sexual and romantic relationships. The songs that Marani and Bessie Smith sang were incredibly taboo for the time period as they painted imagery of sexual love, sometimes queer sexual love, which hadn't been done before in recorded music. In their music, they rarely sang about being wives or abiding by the ideology of feminine domesticity. And I actually want to read an excerpt from Dr. Davis's book where she talks about how black women blue singers of the time were a bit ostracized due to their lyrical content and the way that they carried themselves.

So Dr. Davis said, even though the period of ascendancy of black women, blue singers were relatively short, these women nonetheless managed to produce a vast, body of musical texts and a rich cultural legacy. One might expect that because the classic blues era coincided with the Harlem Renaissance, this musical articulation of African American culture would have been treated extensively by writers and intellectuals of the day. However, because women like Bessie Smith and Ida Cox presented and embodied sexualities associated with working class black life, which fatally was seen by some Renaissance strategists as antithetical to the aims of their cultural movement.

Their music was designated as low culture, in contrast, for example, to endeavor such as sculpture, painting, literature, and classical music. So I wanted to read that excerpt because it goes to highlight the pervasive elitism and obvious misogy noir in the black creative and artisan space of the time. This line of thinking extended into the era of Billy Holiday's rise. And honestly, well into today's music industry. In Philly's Rise, she faced a bit of backlash from black critics that were wrapped in the framework of respectability due to the content of her music being about sex and desirability and infidelity and having queer imagery. Later in her life and career, she was actually rejected by these same folks for her public persona and is what led to her overall ostracization from the industry elites.

So folks who had been originally in her corner kind of abandoned her towards the end of her life because she was just a bit too risque for the time. And this also is connected to the sort of genre that she sings. So Billie Holiday is a lot of times mistakenly classified as a blues singer. And a lot of this actually has to do with the fact that most black artists at the time were considered blues singers. They were kind of pigeonholed into that genre in the same way that today you'll watch like the Grammys and you'll see who's like nominated in like a rap or hip hop category and it's

like that's she sings pop why is she in the rap category but it's like they're black so yeah all them in that in that same section but um so billy is uh kind of pigeonholed in blues but really she's she operates somewhere in between jazz blues and pop music so i feel like she's very instrumental in in really building a pop sound um the same sound that we hear today. But anyways, going back to what I was speaking about earlier, and just really as an aside, I feel like the most recent example in the elitist and massage noir line of thinking is the reaction to the recent song that just came out by Cardi B and Megan the Stallion called WAP. From a wide range of critics, they received this rejection to the song. They were

vehemently rejected because they're black women proclaiming this autonomy, this sexual autonomy in a way that's just unacceptable for a lot of black elite who feel like they operate within this framework of respectability. So there are a million other examples of this happening in today's industry, but yeah, Billy was just very obviously a product of this era of Bessie Smith and Maureen in the content of her music and her sound. And even in the way that she was perceived by the media and her own artisan community. Yeah, incredibly insightful.

I love that book by Angela Davis that you introduced me to, so we'll definitely link to that in the show notes for people to check out, to dive into that whole text and just the amazing insight that it has. And you've mentioned throughout this episode the sort of the queer elements

in Billy Holidays, her art, but also obviously in her life, because if I'm not mistaken, she was openly bisexual, and it had many open relationships with women and men alike. Isn't that true? Yes, that's true, which was totally taboo for the time period. It was very taboo.

People were just shocked that she was so open with her relationship. She even had relationships with white women, which was just very shocking for the time. Exactly. Yeah, her entire existence was subversive to the conservative culture of America at that time and probably still now. And I like how you draw that straight line from her. and the reaction she got all the way up through Cardi B and Megan the Stallion still getting that sort of rejection today from a bunch of different angles.

So that's incredibly interesting. So moving on a little bit, and we're getting to the last couple of questions here, the music scene of the 1930s and 40s in America was one of rapid evolution. So how did coming up in that context impact Billy's career, in your opinion? Yeah, so just as some historical context, prior to the 1910s, the music business was comprised of song publishers, theater concerns, and a handful of monopolistic labels. Sheet music at the time was actually the cash cow of the music business, which I found very interesting. But it just goes to show you at the time, most music was heard

live and not on records, although records were technically being sold at the time. In the 1920s, record sales began to become more and more common, which led to regional music spreading. and becoming popular across the country. So this is actually how jazz, which was a genre, born in the black communities of New Orleans, became a widely popular genre across the U.S. When folks in the music business started to realize how lucrative record sales had become

and how many Americans finally had the means to purchase their own individually sold records, they really took advantage. And this gave rise to smaller independent recording labels that challenged the monopolistic majors of the day And just to name a few, those were like Columbia, Victor, and Edison's National Phonograph Company. So Billy Holiday rose to fame in this era that I just described, an era that can be categorized as the transition from a music business into a full-blown music industry that we know today. In the 1930s and 40s, large music labels began putting massive emphasis on record sales and pushing units, which as a result began to change the sort of music.

that was being created and recorded. It was truly an era that birthed pop music, kind of like what I mentioned in the last question, because of the industries focused and pushed on producing music that would sell, there was a lot less attention being paid to creative expression and talent and more being paid to how much money an artist could make a label. So Billy came up in the center of that, and I feel like that really shaped her art.

it shaped how she was treated in the industry. I would even go as far as to say that it probably contributed to her demise a bit because at this time I feel like was kind of the birth of the superstardom that kind of started to come about and that whole concept of celebrity. And she kind of fell victim to that. But all of it can really be connected back to the fact that the music business became a music industry. And anytime something because in industry, it just kind of complicates things a bit more. So that's how I feel about that.

Yeah, incredibly interesting. So let's go ahead and end this wonderful discussion about Billy Holiday's life with a question about her legacy. So we know that she died at the age of 44, technically due to cirrhosis of the liver from a lifetime of hard drinking and drug use. her hospital room was raided by the narcotics agency led by Harry Anslinger and she was handcuffed on her deathbed right before she died dying tragically as I said at an untimely age of a 44 years old what is Billy's legacy today in your opinion and what do you what lessons or inspirations do you pull from the life story of Billy Holiday yeah so um I think that Billy's legacy today is complicated, honestly. I think it seems to be shrouded in mystery and kind of

cloaked in deep admiration. I think people are so inspired by who she was as an artist. I think she can be looked at through a feminist framework and inspire through that. At the same time, I think she had a very tragic life. I know she had a very tragic life just based on the experiences that I read about and how her life ended, as you mentioned. And so it's complicated. People even discuss the fact that in her autobiography, there are a number of claims that she made that can be disputed as lies. And I've been thinking just over the past few weeks of studying her about the way that she

might have wanted to finally control a narrative of her own. And if that meant lying in her autobiography, so be it. And just the idea of building this persona, this character of Billy Holiday or Lady Day and living out her life exactly how she wanted to live it. And it's just, it's made me question a lot. It's made me take a step back and really explore my own thoughts when I read about folks who are addicted to drugs and alcohol and how I feel like it can be attributed to trauma when sometimes the answer is that people just want to do drugs or want to drink and it gets

out of hand just chemically and it's not necessarily always something that can be seen through like a patronizing lens I guess so she's just really learning about Billy Holiday has really just challenged me in so many ways. And like I said, I think her legacy today is very complicated. And I think it's allowed to be that way. And I'm glad it's that way. I'm glad it's not cookie cutter. And I think in the same way that she lived her life very boldly in her death, her life can be studied in a very bold way. And I just, I've just really enjoyed learning about her. Yeah, absolutely. And for my part, I would just say that, you know, Billy's life, like so many of the individual lives that we cover here on Rev Left are covered not only because of their own unique interests and fascinations that are spawned by these amazing people,

but also because you learn so much about history through the prism of their lives. And understanding Billy's life is to understand and is to understand a life shaped by white supremacy, by violent patriarchy, by colorism, as you mentioned, by anti-blackness more broadly. and the drug war that we all know and hate and has led to mass incarceration in this horrific country we live in was started in a lot of ways with these attacks on people like Billy Holiday and these other black musicians who the status quo maintainers of the white supremacist system saw as inherent threats to that hierarchy of whiteness. And so they were harassed, intimidated, brutalized black artists. black intellectuals, black revolutionaries, all throughout American history, have been targets of the U.S. state, and that continues to this very day.

One of the heartbreaking things about Billy Holliday's life and death was that she didn't get to see her legacy. And in fact, on one of the days before she died, she told her close friend that she was convinced that Harry Anslinger, through his harassment, through putting her in prison, through, you know, these last-minute raids on her hospital rooms and whatnot, that he would ruin her legacy, that she would not be remembered going forward because people like Harry Anslinger had such a dedication to uprooting and eradicating her legacy, her memory, her life. And I think episodes like this and just the continued attraction that Billy Holiday has for so many people all around the world is a testament that Billy Holiday is not forgetting.

You know, Harry Anslinger will go down in history as a villain if he's remembered at all. and Billy and her voice and her life live on. And so taking that away from it is something we can do at the very least. Absolutely. Absolutely. So as a way to end this, can you please let listeners know where they can find you online? And if you have anything to plug, promote, or recommend to our listeners. Yeah.

So I'm on Twitter and Instagram. On Twitter, I am Stena Tiff, S-T-U-N-A-T-I-F. I'm on there just talking about various things from communism, to aliens to jokes and memes just, you know, talking about whatever. And then on Instagram, I'm Stunna Tiff underscore.

So same as my Twitter, but with an underscore at the end. And there you can find some pretty things that I post on my feed and occasional rants in my Instagram stories. I don't actually have anything to plug, but I did want to say I'm actually looking for a

political home in Atlanta. This is my first time back after being abroad in Thailand for a year and then before that being in college in Florida so this is really my first time kind of being settled in Atlanta so if you guys have any recommendations for political homes or

mutual aid organizations that you recommend in the area I would love for you guys to reach out to me and let me know but yeah this has been an amazing conversation I just wanted to thank you again for reaching out this is probably one of the coolest opportunities I've ever had I've just been a

huge fan of yours and of Rev left for all of these years. You're actually a big part of my radicalization. And I just wanted to thank you for this opportunity and for doing the good work that you do. Yeah. Well, I deeply appreciate that, Tiffany. And I could not have asked for a better guest to cover Billy Holiday's life. I'm so impressed with the amount of work you put into it. And I'm just so thankful. And let's absolutely do this again. There's a million topics. We can tackle together. And I just love talking with you. And if anybody is in the Atlanta area and have anything that you want to recommend to Tiffany for an organization to join it and help out, let her know or let me know. And I'll pass it along. However it gets done, I think that's incredibly important. So thank you so much again, Tiffany. This has been absolutely amazing. And let's definitely do this again. No problem. Thank you so much.

Lady sings the blues. She's got them bad. She feels so sad and wants the world to know just where her blues is all about. about. The lady sings the blues. She tells her side, nothing to hide.

Now the world will know just what the blue is just what the blue is. the blues is all about the blues ain't nothing but a pain in your heart when you get a bad start when you and your man have to part I ain't gonna just sit around and cry I know I won't die

Because I love him Lay sings the blues I'm telling you She's got them bad But now the world will know she's never going to sing them no more because the blues is nothing but pain in your heart

when you get a bad start when you and your man have to part ain't gonna just sit right and cry I know I won't die because I love him lady sings blues

I'm telling you she's got them bad but now the world will know she's never gonna sing them no more no more

Thank you.