}); However, drummer Jo Jones has a entirely different recollection of why Holiday parted ways with Basie. 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 . Tony Bennett, who says he briefly knew Holiday, sums up the way a lot of people feel about Holiday: She told her own story, just by being herself. var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 - wrapper.outerHeight()); Her second drug bust came in San Francisco in 1949, but she didnt get any prison time for that arrest. Show more 3 months left to watch 1 hour, 30 minutes Last on. var readyStateOverflowInterval; By all accounts, he was abusive and a heavy drug user. The official cause of death was ruled a suicide, but her younger sister Myra Luftman (who is not interviewed on camera) says in the documentary that Kuehl probably died from foul play because of the research that Keuhl was doing for the book. A talented journalist who wrote a biography about the songstress 20 years after her gradual death, Kuehl dedicated a decade to interviewing the friends and artists who knew Holiday best. Holiday corrects an interviewer saying that she was fourteen when she arrived in New York. Even though she performed a historic sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall after she was let out of prison in 1948 (at the time, Carnegie Hall was a venue for classical and opera music, not jazz), the damage to her reputation was done. Erskine at least benefits from the basic volume of his source material. 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. John Simmons, who was her bass player and lover, calls her a sex machine. Music conductor Ray Ellis also comments on Holidays sex appeal: I was in love with Billie, not necessarily Billie, but somebody. It also brings up a few necessary, if rarely confronted questions. function resize77260663c877fb829bf(wrapper){ Read jazz pianist Richard Fregulias review of Billie. Billie Holiday, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins in The Sound of Jazz.. Although Luftman couldnt be sure if Basie and her sister had a sexual affair, she thinks those threats might have had something to do with Kuehls death. id: "captainform_js_global_vars", Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Linda Lipnack Kuehl was writing a biography of Holiday when she died suddenly in 1978, though her family believe she may have been murdered, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. var popupTrigger = jQuery("#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb829bf"); Particularly jarring is a small girl made up to look as if she was Billie as a child. if ('' == 'left') Kuehl conducted over 150 interviews in the early 1970s, less than two decades after Holidays death in 1959, so the memories of Holiday are still fresh and free from todays prejudices. [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. They are particularly pertinent, showing what kind of child she was and what the neighborhood was like for poor African Americans. }, 10); Kuehl was and still is, posthumously, THE preeminent biographer of Billie Holiday, despite never having completed Holiday's biography before she died in 1978. resize77260563c877fb82c45(wrapper); At times the interviews use words that grate on modern ears. KUEHLLinda (Lipnack). Before her mysterious death in 1978, Lipnack Kuehl had taped over 200 hours of interviews. Line: 315 Her death was ruled a suicide. 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. Sylvia Syms, a singer and longtime friend of Holidays, comments on Holidays drug addiction: She really dug being high, but I never saw anyone with such a capacity., Its mentioned several times in the documentary that Holidays well-known drug problem and the controversy over Strange Fruit led to a conspiracy to bring her down, with the FBI involved. var popupParams = { popupTrigger.css('visibility', 'visible'); [8], Kuehl's research revealed that Holiday's addictions were "becoming a crutch for a life beset with violence, misogyny and racism."[2]. Holiday is clearly listening to, engaging with, and nodding her approval and at times stony apathy for the licks the instrumentalists take during their solos. Holiday's beauty and misery made her into a tragic figure to everyone except Linda Lipnack Kuehl. 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. captainformThemeStyle['772606'] = ''; He was like a visitor, but she was too.. var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63c877fb83722'); popupTrigger.click(function(){ The next thing I know, she was using coke.. Her death was ruled as a suicide. Along with Count Basie, we were the Royal Family, Holiday said in an archival interview. For some eight years in the 1970s, Kuehl interviewed everyone she could find who had a personal association with Holiday musicians, managers, childhood friends, lovers and FBI agents among them. 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.. A new documentary, Billie, will delve into the life of jazz great Billie Holiday with the help of hours of never-before-heard interviews. function resize77260563c877fb83722(wrapper){ Line: 208 elementType: "script", ("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)}; Message: Undefined variable: user_membership, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/views/user/popup_modal.php Review: Billie (2020), an oral history of Billie Holidays life. FISHER Satisfies the Appetite, Memorable and Best Forgotten Thanksgivings. Both died young Holiday at age 44, of liver cirrhosis. However, Linda's book was never finished and the tapes never heard . Oral history is only as good as the interviewer and Kuehl, a very attractive white woman, put her interviewees at ease by interviewing them most often in bars where they worked and turning off the microphone when asked. Function: _error_handler, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/views/page/index.php Song list and samples here.She portrayed Holiday on stage in C.J.Verburgs play Lady Day in Love. But, for the most part, hes squandered it. For some eight years in the 1970s, Kuehl interviewed everyone she could find who had a personal association with Holiday musicians, managers, childhood friends, lovers and FBI agents among. } She also began hanging out at a brothel, which is where she first heard jazz music. Elle fut la premire icne de la protestation contre le racisme ce qui lui a valu de puissants ennemis. 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. captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); popupTrigger.click(function(){ }; var popupTrigger = jQuery("#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb834ac"); Function: _error_handler, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/views/user/popup_harry_book.php So many people have rhapsodized about her voice that we often forget that for those who saw her sing live her face was also a powerful vehicle of emotion. She was a woman of breath-taking talent and global popularity while also stirring controversy. resize77260563c877fb82c45(wrapper); The book was left unfinished, Kuehls tapes buried away until now. Various biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material. Eleanors favorite curse words were motherfucker and cocksucker., By all accounts, Eleanor started working as a housecleaner/maid before she was a teenager. Line: 192 She wanted to have sex, mostly with women. This was one of the principal reasons why she left the band. Hammond estimates that Holidays salary with Basie was $125 a week, at the most. Holiday can only be fairly described as oscillating from pleasingly plump to svelte for much of her career. }); if(typeof cfJsHost != 'undefined'){ captainformDomReady(function() { View eatdrinkfilmsmags profile on Instagram, View eatdrinkfilmssos profile on Pinterest, BILLIE documentary is Actually Linda Kuehl on Billie. }); Kuehl was twice-divorced with no children, while Basie was married with children. Intending to write a biography of Billie Holiday, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's read more. Sarah Julia Sadie Fagan (a maid) was 13 when she gave birth to Eleanora, and Clarence Halliday (a musician) was 15. She was raped at age 10 and sent to a reform school as a result. Protest songs became more prevalent in the 1960s, but Holiday was a pioneer. 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. "She excited me with just three notes," drummer Roy Harte tells Kuehl. The story of Billie Holiday's rise to fame after a difficult upbringing is nothing new. elementType: "script", Holidays eyes plead, her lips sneer and her single eyebrow rises suggestively and reproachfully. }, 50); There was a rebellious engine inside both of them. else if ('' == 'right') Intending to write a biography of Billie Holiday, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's life, but died before its completion. captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); Kuehl was white, born in the Bronx and relatively prosperous. Her family, however, believed otherwise. Considering all the trauma that Holiday had when she was a child (she was also raped more than once when she was a teenager), its no surprise that she ended up way that she did. }); Linda Lipnack Kuehl . Line: 107 Then in the late 1960's journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. [4], She was a Jewish feminist[5] and a fan of Billie Holiday. The first of the two films - "Billie" is a documentary built around some previously unheard audio interviews conducted by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who was working on a comprehensive biography on Billie Holiday before her untimely death in 1978.Ms. jQuery(wrapper).find('a').removeAttr('href'); Shortly after she became a professional singer as a teenager, Holiday began working with musician/producer John Hammond, who introduced her to Benny Goodman in 1933. (Courtesy of the Kuehl family) Kuehl left behind a trove of notes, transcripts and some 200 hours of interviews on cassette tapesmostly in shoeboxes, some labeled, some not. Is it possible to tell someone elses story without, invariably, telling our own? var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! captainForm772606PreloadInterval63c877fb834ac = setInterval(function(){ var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb829bf'); Courtesy of the Kuehl family. [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. There are great archival photos of East Baltimore and of the reform school and the jail she was sent to. For the biography, Kuehl set out to interview hundreds of people, ranging from band members and pimps (Holiday . [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. gallery of images and videos of both singers. James Erskine's documentary, built around lengthy interviews conducted in the 1970s by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, demonstrates how dangerous it can be to mesh with one's subject matter. Kuehl was an experienced arts journalist who wrote for The Paris Review and The New York Times Sunday magazine. jQuery(wrapper).find('a').removeAttr('href'); if ('' == 'left') Like most documentaries on older famous Black jazz musicians, stock photography is used since there was no available footage, but better photography could have been used. Kuehl died after attending a Basie concert in Washington, D.C. Luftman says that a big clue for her that it wasnt a suicide was that Kuehl had a cosmetic face mask on, which was her habit when she got ready for bed. Whatever the real reasons for Holidays exit from the Count Basie Orchestra, her next career opportunity was one that was groundbreaking but controversial at the time. I think she felt the pain of someones struggles. 2019 Directed by James Erskine Synopsis She sang the truth, she paid the price 'Lady Day' was one of the greatest jazz vocalists the world ever heard. Not everyone wanted to share their memories with her. Her death was ruled as a suicide. setTimeout(function () { clearInterval(captainForm772606PreloadInterval63c877fb829bf); 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. window.addEventListener('resize', function(){ var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb834ac'); else if ('' == 'right') Monroe would become Holidays first husband, whom she married in 1941. I would expect that at least they could have found a child with the same coloring as Holiday. Being a solo act gave Holiday the freedom to record whats considered the most important and most controversial song of her career: Strange Fruit. Written by Abel Meeropol under the alias Lewis Allan, and released in 1939, the song is a poetically brutal commentary on racial injustice, particularly in describing the lynching of black people in the South. Holidays time with Basie and his band ended on a sour note when she left. During the famous 1957 Sound of Jazz television recording of Fine & Mellow others have described Holidays face as smacked out on drugs or liquor; instead, this film makes it clear that the ecstasy on Holidays face is from hearing the sounds of her musical soulmate saxophonist Lester Young play. She was the victim of repeated sexual abuse. Consistently entertaining, Billie is really about the writer and subject of the . Holidays mother Sadie (who took an interested in her daughters career) was nicknamed Duchess. See was a rugged, powerfully built man; handsome, athletic and. elementType: "script", type: "text/javascript", Then there's the story of journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who had been working on a biography of Holiday for nearly a decade before she met her own untimely death in 1978. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { An epilogue at the end of the documentary mentions that because of the destruction of police records, investigations into Lindas death made during the film proved inconclusive., In the documentary, Luftman explains why her sister wanted to write a Billie Holiday biography: Even thought they came from totally different backgrounds, I think she really identified with Billie. Billie feels typical, even if its attention to detail gives it an obvious appeal. Wells, African Americans were most often lynched because they were financially successful or not deferential enough. The director James Erskine does a great job inserting commentary during relevant moments. jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 + wrapper.width() + wrapper.css('padding').replace('px', '') * 2); In 1928, Holiday and her mother moved to New York Citys Harlem neighborhood.