Billie Holiday: The dawn of Jazz America

“God bless the child that got its own”

Billie Holiday’s career spans from the 30’s to the 50’s of the last century. This was the mythical time of America’s Jazz, a time of poverty and frugality, the music of small clubs, the lost sounds of stars nicknames that evoked closeness and familiarity. As it was usual, singers used to tour accompanied by orchestras already with a name of their own. It was in the Count Bessie Orchestra that Billie met legends of the sort of Lester Young. Besides working alongside bands, she developed an important solo career that took her from tiny little clubs in Baltimore and Harlem to the greatest concert halls in Europe even. Billie’s private life had a great deal of an impact on her song writings. She sang of poverty, which experienced earlier in her life, of troubled relationships as in “my man”, and of discrimination a scar more than alive at the time personally and objectively. Eventually was her habit of substance abuse that took her away from the stage for quite some time not only because of health-related problems, but also because she was jailed a couple of times. Her signature style, elegant and mesmerizing, conveys an ever present note of sweet and sour melancholy.