She co-wrote a few songs, and several of them have become jazz standards, notably “God Bless the Child”, “Don’t Explain”, and “Lady Sings the Blues”. She also became famous for singing jazz standards written by others, including “Easy Living” and “Strange Fruit.”
Her career is hard to track down with accuracy. But, we know that she worked as a prostitute for a Harlem brothel and was imprisoned for a short period for soliciting.
She later gained work singing in local jazz clubs before being spotted by a talent scout, John Hammond, in 1933, aged 18.
She was a famous icon of the jazz era and influential in the development of jazz singing. In the late 1930s, she began singing a civil rights song called “Strange Fruit” – a song which told the tale of a lynching of a black man in the deep south. It was very controversial for that period, and it was not played on radios. It was recorded for Commodore Records, and she performed it many times over the next 20 years.
Billie Holiday had a difficult upbringing which influenced her perspective on life. She was drawn to abusive men, and she experienced many tempestuous relationships. She also became dependent on various narcotics which contributed to her premature death in 1959, at the age of just 44 years old.
