With Billie - Hardcover

Blackburn, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375406107 ISBN 13: 9780375406102

Publisher: Pantheon, 2005

Synopsis

From Julia Blackburn, an author whose ability to conjure lives from other times and places is so vivid that one suspects she sees ghosts, here is a portrait of a woman whose voice continues to haunt anyone who hears it.

Billie Holiday’s life is inseparable from an account of her troubles, her addictions, her arrests, and the scandals that would repeatedly put her name in the tabloid headlines of the 1940s and 1950s. Those who knew her learned never to be surprised by what she might do. Her moods and faces were so various that she could seem to be a different woman from one moment to the next. Volatile, unpredictable, Billie Holiday remained, even to her friends, an elusive and perplexing figure.

In With Billie, we hear the voices of those people–piano players and dancers, pimps and junkies, lovers and narcs, producers and critics, each recalling intimate stories of the Billie they knew. What emerges is a portrait of a complex, contradictory, enthralling woman, a woman who knew what really mattered to her. Reading With Billie, one is convinced that she has only just left the room but will return shortly.

About this title

About the Author

Julia Blackburn is the author of several other works of nonfiction, including Charles Waterton and The Emperor’s Last Island, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her most recent book, Old Man Goya, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Blackburn lives in England and Italy.

Reviews

Piecing together interviews with more than 150 people who knew Billie Holiday, Blackburn creates a biography that at times surges with energy. These interviews, which were conducted in the 1970s but never published, offer readers a unique glimpse into Holiday's life as those close to the legendary jazz singer recall the sometimes touching, often brutal events that formed her resilient character. Blackburn, author of several books, including Old Man Goya, begins by recalling her first experience with Holiday's music, but quickly steps aside, allowing the interviewees' stories to speak for themselves. Each person offers a unique perspective of Holiday, from girls who attended reform school with her to fellow musicians and boyfriends who chronicle the world of prostitution and drug use in which Holiday was immersed. Unfortunately, Blackburn makes little attempt to weave together these different voices, which makes for a disjointed read. But the anecdotes are nonetheless fascinating, covering Holiday's troubled childhood in Baltimore through her years of acclaim and hardship: "In that era all the female vocalists had to have a man who'll beat on them and take their money sic," recalls her bass player John Levy. Described alternately as a "shy girl" and a boisterous woman who loved to laugh, someone comfortable in the slums but also "a person with a lot of pride," Holiday emerges as a multifaceted figure. The one thing agreed upon by all the interviewees, though, is the mesmerizing quality of her voice, and fans will cherish this book as an attempt to reveal the complexities of the woman behind that extraordinary talent.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Blackburn (Old Man Goya, 2002) picked up the loose ends of a previous effort by biographer Linda Kuehl to chronicle the life of Billie Holiday, an effort that yielded 150 interviews with people who knew the jazz singer. Among those sharing remembrances are her godfather, friends, lovers, fellow musicians, producers, and critics. A woman recalls watching over Holiday in the House of Good Shephard reform school in New York. A black narcotics agent tells of being haunted by the harassment and harsh treatment of Holiday. Friends recall the strained relationship with her musician father, who, out of vanity, wouldn't acknowledge her. Others relate the genesis of Holiday's signature song, "Strange Fruit," and her belief that it provoked the wrath of the government. Included are poignant remembrances of her relationships--troubled and nurturing--with pimps, socialites, musicians, and actors, including Lester Young and Tallulah Bankhead. They speak of Holiday's drug abuse and sexual proclivities, her amazing talent and generous spirit, and her early death, at age 44. This is a much deeper and grittier look at Holiday's life than was rendered in her autobiography, the admittedly prettified Lady Sings the Blues. Fans will love Blackburn's honest portrait of the enormously talented singer. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONEThe Record SleeveWhen I first heard Billie Holiday’s voice, I had just turned fourteen. I was at a party and everyone was much older than me and very drunk. Their movements seemed to have been slowed down; even the way they opened and closed their mouths was too slow.There were two prostitutes at the party. One was a woman called Sally. She had short-cropped hair, but I can no longer find her face in my mind. She lived with a tall thin homosexual called Barry, who had huge front teeth and floppy black hair, and I can see him easily. They used to invite me over to their flat in Mayfair and they liked to show me a cupboard that was full of ropes and masks and whips. On one occasion when the three of us were having tea, a client dropped by, but Sally said she couldn’t do anything for himbecause she had a guest.She did take me out for an appointment with two American businessmen. We went to the Ritz and ate lobsters, which I had never eaten before, and I was shocked by the sound their claws made when they were cracked open. One of the men asked me how old I was and, when I told him, he panicked and ordered a taxi and sent me away with a book on sexual techniques as a present. Sally and Barrywanted me to sell my virginity. They used to telephone me and tell me about an old gentleman they knew and how easy it would all be and how much he was prepared to pay.I had never met the other prostitute at the party and I don’t know her name. She was plump and blonde. She had taken off all her clothes and she was dancing among the guests. Every so often she would squat down and run her hand between her legs and then lick her fingers with a loud lip-smacking noise. Everyone was laughing, and Barry, who was always competitive, took off all his clothes and did a little shimmying dance with his penis tucked tightly between his thighs. I was very impressed because he suddenly looked almost like a woman.A man in a dark sweater was staring at me; he kept pursing his mouth into tight kisses and winking one wrinkled eye. I was frightened of him. I was frightened of every person in the room except for Sally, because she had always said she would look after me if there was trouble and I wanted to believe her.My mother had arranged the party and invited the guests. She was laughing and drinking and having fun. The relationship between us had changed since she had separated from my father. Before, we had been allies of sorts, busy every night with an assessment of the danger and the likelihood of violence; ready to run and hide if things got too bad. But now things were different and we had become two women: one young, the other no longer young. My mother never said she would look after me if there was trouble and itnever occurred to me that she might. I was aware of her watching the man who was watching me.I escaped to a far corner of the room and sat down on the carpet next to the new record player, its wine-red plasticsurface stamped incongruously with an imitation of the scales on a snake skin. I looked through the little pile of records that people had brought to the party and stopped at one called A Billie Holiday Memorial. There was a black-and-white photograph of a woman on the cover. She was illuminated by a stage spotlight and she was wearing a white evening dress that left her shoulders bare. She was standing verystiff and straight, her head tilted slightly upwards towards the benediction of the light, her arms bent at the elbows, her hands clenched into fists. I couldn’t see her feet, but I could tell from her stance that she must have had them planted firmly on the ground, as though she was on the deck of a ship and was maintaining her balance in spite of the breathing swell of the ocean. She was caught in the gaze of lights and cameras in front of an audience of strangers who were gathered in the darkness to watch her, and yet she seemed to be completely alone. It was as if the act of singing filled her with such a wild joy that she was aware of nothing else for as long as the song lasted.I lowered the needle onto the spinning black disc. The music began with the notes of a piano stepping lightly as a dancer, and then some other instruments whose names I didn’t know joined in. They were like an excited crowd of people who were all talking, laughing, telling jokes, but bound together by the sound of a regular beat.Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, a woman’s voice arrived. She flew in there among them like a bird and I realised that all the instruments had been waiting to welcome her. To my surprise she didn’t seem to care about the beat which they wove around her, and she kept pulling at it and stretching it until I thought she had lost it entirely. But just when it seemed too late, she was back again.‘I . . .’ she sang, her voice as clear and strong as a trumpet, pulling out that one long vowel of sound. ‘I . . . cried for you, now it’s your turn to cry over me.’ She sounded so close and familiar. It was as if she was looking straight at me.She was telling me a story about how she had once loved a man, and he was unkind to her and made her very unhappy. But then she met another man who was much nicer and she was happy again. Meanwhile, the man who had made her sad was beginning to miss her, and so the wheel had come full circle and it was his turn to cry.She sounded as brave as a lioness and yet she also sounded as fearful as a child. Listening to her, I didn’t have the sense that she was bitter or resentful, or that she was angry with the man who had hurt her and glad to see him suffer. Her message was much simpler: she was telling me that things change, life moves on, laughter is followed by tears, and tears are followed by laughter. After you have been knocked to the floor, you rise up and get on your feet again.The record went on playing and I listened as more and more stories were told. There was a lot of unrequited love and a lot of longing for a world in which a man and a woman could live happily ever after. But even the saddest songs were full of courage. It was as if just the fact of singing was in itself a triumph and a way of dealing with despair.The last song on the record was called ‘For All We Know’. I had no idea how much time separated the first recordings from this one, but I could hear at once that a number of years had passed. It was clearly the same woman who was singing, but her voice had changed profoundly; it had lost that dancing, light-hearted effervescence and instead it seemed to be pulled forward by a sheer effort of will. But still she was strong and I was made strong by listening to her.On the morning after the party, I bought myself a copy of the record. I played it over and over until I knew the words of all the songs and they had become my stories as well. It was not that I suddenly believed in eyes of blue and hearts so true, or in cottages by streams where I would just like to dream, but I did believe in Billie Holiday and the way her voice could chase out my fears.The record has always stayed with me since then, travelling from place to place. I haven’t looked after it well; the black vinyl is warped and scratched, and only a few of the songs can struggle to be heard. But I have kept it anyway because of the memory of myself as a young girl at a party and because of the photograph of Billie Holiday on the cover and how she impressed me when I first heard her sing.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375406107
• ISBN 13: 9780375406102
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368