if(typeof cfJsHost != 'undefined'){ A 1938 portrait, when she appeared at Cafe Society in NYC with a swatch of gardenias in hair hairstyle, which from then on became her trademark. captainForm772605PreloadInterval63c877fb82c45 = setInterval(function(){ How Kuehl managed to construct Billies life and Kuehls life is just as interesting as Holidays life in my opinion. Linda Lipnack Kuehl was an American arts journalist, based in New York City. ("elementType"in e))return!1;var n=null;if(n=e.following?e.following.parentElement:e.inside?e.inside:e.replacing?e.replacing.parentElement:"script"==e.elementType?document.head:document.body,null==n)return!1;var l=document.createElement(e.elementType);delete e.elementType,l=jQuery.extend(l,e),e.replacing?n.replaceChild(l,e.replacing):n.appendChild(l)}; var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? Over 8 years, she tracked down and tape-recorded over 200 hours of interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. A frail-looking Holiday is shown holding a glass of alcohol. resize77260663c877fb834ac(wrapper); Hopefully someday a filmmaker will be able to tackle the intersectionality of Holiday being both Black and a woman when neither had many rights, and Holiday as a jazz genius when singers were considered neither musicians nor geniuses. Various biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material. Holidays birth name was Eleanora Fagan, and she was born to teenage parents in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915. var popupTrigger = jQuery("#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb829bf"); Pulled out of school at 11, she worked in a brothel at age 12, and by age 14 she was in Harlem singing at the Hot Cha Club. Skinny Davenport, a pimp who knew Holiday in her prostitution days, describes how the hookers in the neighborhood were treated: Knock em down, kick em in the ass. (The documentary has lots of images of cassette recorders and reel-to-reel tap machines in operation, to give a visual representation of these interviews.) captainForm772605PreloadInterval63c877fb83722 = setInterval(function(){ Kim Nalley is on faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory and is writing her Doctoral dissertation on the Globalization of Jazz and Black Cultural Politics.. captainformThemeStyle['772605'] = ''; if('' == 'floating') { }; }); She started a notable rebellion singing "Strange Fruit" which exposed the realities of Black life in America and earned her powerful enemies. clearInterval(captainForm772605PreloadInterval63c877fb83722); Music producer Marty Gabler says in the documentary that Columbia Records didnt want to release Strange Fruit because of the social content and because of how unusual it was to do a protest song. Strange Fruit is considered historically important because it was one of the first social justice songs released by a mainstream performer prior to the U.S. civil rights movement. captainform_preload_form_popup(popupParams); } Basies saxophonist Lester Young is credited with giving Holiday the nickname Lady Day. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { var readyStateOverflowInterval; } They are particularly pertinent, showing what kind of child she was and what the neighborhood was like for poor African Americans. Its implied that her addiction issues were inherited, because Sandy Williams, a bandmate of Holidays father Clarence, describes Clarence as a happy-go-lucky guy who loved his booze and was often drunk. } Monroe would become Holidays first husband, whom she married in 1941. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { textContent: 'var frmRef=""; try { frmRef=window.top.location.href; } catch(err) {}; var captainform_servicedomain="app.captainform.com";var cfJsHost = "https://";', Get a load of the critics, the people who judge our music. Kuehl is remarkable for interviewing lesser known people who had a lot of contact with Lady Day. A 1947 shootout with cops in Philadelphia led to Holidays first arrest for narcotics possession. [3] In 1978 she was found dead on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk,[3][8][10] after attending a Count Basie concert. [13] Some of Kuehl's material was used in Donald Clarke's 1994 biography, Wishing on the Moon[14] and her interviews were used in Julia Blackburn's 2005 biography With Billie: a New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day. They got married in 1957. (Its hard to believe he didnt know.) var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? Holiday can only be fairly described as oscillating from pleasingly plump to svelte for much of her career. She was a generous person, Id say, in thought anyway. Kuehl was and still is, posthumously, THE preeminent biographer of Billie Holiday, despite never having completed Holiday's biography before she died in 1978. Kuehl was an experienced arts journalist who wrote for The Paris Review and The New York Times Sunday magazine. var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! They were all gathered by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, the late journalist who spent a decade in the Sixties and Seventies talking to those who knew Holiday best, conducting more than 125 interviews and . She had not performed with nor seen him in years and her delight is plain. Did someone consider the pairs intimacy a threat? This unusual, ambitious doc doubles down on the challenge, adding an extra frame to the portrait: the obsession that drove journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl to toil for years on an epic biography of . Those now-deceased jazz voices include Count Basie, Charles Mingus, John Hammond, Jo Jones and Sylvia Syms. Jo Jones says bitterly and vehemently, Holiday was persecuted less for the song Strange Fruit or drugs and more for being an uppity Negress who lived large wearing furs, diamonds, driving a Cadillac and spending money freely. That face! The chief suspect in Lipnack Kuehl's killing was Billie's manager and husband, Louis McKay. An avid fan of Holiday, she planned to write a biography of the hero with whom she, perhaps to an unhealthy degree, self-identified. The woman responsible for those interviews was the journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who took it upon herself in 1971 to begin the years-long process of researching a biography. }, 50); Nalleys Ballads for Billie is now available on CD or as a digital album. Her death was ruled as a suicide. if('' == 'floating') { }); He was 18, she was 16, and I was three" - but was also full of inaccuracies. var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? The film highlights a review that scathingly derides Billie for being heavy reminding us that draconian female standards of beauty have been around for a long time. Line: 68 Kuehl's parents were Sol and Ida Lipnack and she had a sister, Myra Luftman. Her face is an actress as much as her voice. It also brings up a few necessary, if rarely confronted questions. There are great archival photos of East Baltimore and of the reform school and the jail she was sent to. Many important details of her life and her musical genius have been overshadowed by a lurid interest in her love life and drug use. Theres a lingering sense that Kuehl understood something deeper, but Billie never seems all that curious to find out what that might be. Function: view, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/index.php This is not to say that there is no filmed footage. var popupTrigger = jQuery("#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63c877fb83722"); else if ('' == 'right') textContent: 'var frmRef=""; try { frmRef=window.top.location.href; } catch(err) {}; var captainform_servicedomain="app.captainform.com";var cfJsHost = "https://";', [3] The interviews were a major source for the text in Robert O'Meally's book of photographs Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (1991)[12] and around the same were used for the script for a Masters of American Music series documentary of the same name. She sang in clubs in Harlem and. var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? She changed her last name to Holiday to capitalize on her fathers connection as a guitarist with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, one of the most respected Black Big Bands of its day. var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! }); Billie Holiday. She also began hanging out at a brothel, which is where she first heard jazz music. elementType: "script", id: "captainform_js_global_vars", popupTrigger.click(function(){ In the late 60s, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Holiday's life, interviewing everyone from jazz greats such as Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett and. append_element({ if ('' == 'left') Dcouvrez la bande annonce du film Billie : BILLIE HOLIDAY est l'une des plus grandes voix de tous les temps. [6] In 1971, she began plans for a biography of Holiday, who had died aged 44 in 1959. She created Freedoms Song: Music of the Civil Rights Movement and was musical director and curator for the Martin Luther King Institutes Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Your email address will not be published. Are you sure you want to cancel your membership with us? Her family, however, believed otherwise. Contact Us if(typeof cfJsHost != 'undefined'){ setTimeout(function () { [11] "Police deemed it suicide, Kuehl having supposedly jumped from her hotel room, although there was no proof of this",[3] and her family believes she may have been murdered. Afterwards she ran errands at a whorehouse where she heard Bessie Smith records which Holiday claimed to be a seminal influence along with Louis Armstrong. id: "captainform_js_global_vars", When she was released from jail at age 14, she left prostitution for good and set her sights on singing for a living. [11][14][15] Documentary director James Erskine bought the rights to Kuehl's tapes[3] and his subsequent film, Billie (2019), is "a journey through Holiday's life, narrated by the voices on those tapes",[3][14][16][17] including Kuehl's. She sang and recorded till the end of her life. Line: 478 captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); Holiday deserves a multi-hour Ken Burns treatment on just her life. Holidays light brown skin contrasts dramaticallywith her dark dresses, and smooth-straightened glossy dark hair and the white gardenias (or lily or orchid.) In a 1971 interview, Ruby Davis, who was Holidays roommate before the singer was famous, says that Holidays nickname was Mr. Billie Holiday because she was seldom seen with fellas Her mother put it in her mind to be careful [of men] because theyll always break your heart, just like Billies father., Harry Sweets Edison, a trumpeter in the Count Basie Orchestra comments on Holiday: She was like a man, but feminine. 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