Synopsis
Traces the life and career of the great jazz singer, including her imprisonment for heroin possession, her struggles against racial prejudice, and an analysis of her performances and recordings
Reviews
Basing his sensitive, perceptive biography on interviews with those who knew the great jazz singer (1915-1959) and on extensive research in court records, police files and newspaper accounts, Nicholson (Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz) chronicles Holiday's tragic life. Raised in speakeasies and brothels, she saw singing as a way out of a tawdry world, but her promising beginning was soon sidetracked by addiction to alcohol, drugs and abusive men. By the time she was 23, her brilliant career began to go downhill, and it would later be seriously marred by arrests and jail terms for narcotics possession. Insecure and abnormally dependent on others, Holiday always put herself at the mercy of self-serving people, and she died lonely, depressed and virtually penniless, a victim of her own self-destructiveness and the many people who had exploited her. Stressing throughout his book the interaction between Holiday's life and her art, Nicholson laments that her image eventually overshadowed her music. He successfully portrays both the genius and the tragedy of the legendary Lady Day. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Holiday's legend is that of the archetypal tormented artist: enormously gifted in one specific area yet unable to cope with everyday life and eventually done in by her own excesses. Although the legend is basically true, the facts have been obscured by the popular 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues and Holiday's somewhat hazy autobiography of the same name. Nicholson attempts to set the record straight in this exhaustively researched book containing over 500 references, a 30-page discography, and five appendixes. The book is essentially divided into two parts?the years 1933 to 1942, when Holiday's association with Columbia established her as one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, and the remainder of her life as her involvement with heroin culminated in her death at age 44 in 1959. This scholarly look at one of the giants of American music is a worthy complement and counterpoint to Holiday's own account.?Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Nicholson's polished, just-the-facts approach to biography was perfect for his book about Ella Fitzgerald and is certainly valuable when it comes to chronicling Billie Holiday's tumultuous life, but one craves psychological illumination of Holiday's complex, even perverse psyche. Fortunately, we've had that in Donald Clarke's superb Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday , so we feel free to praise Nicholson for his precise and eloquent analysis of Holiday's incomparable music. He extols Holiday's "remarkable ear" and gift for learning lyrics, speculates that she must have had relative pitch, and raves about her "maximum minimalism." In discussing her unique, "slow, torchy" style, Nicholson explains that Holiday matched her music to her experiences, creating a persona that elevated her far beyond the emotional range of most performers. As Nicholson tracks Holiday's rapid ascent and abrupt decline, he draws a map of the jazz world during her lifetime, placing Holiday's bright star within that dizzying whirl of musical, narcotic, and sexual improvisation. Holiday and her music will always be open to interpretation; that's what makes her so great. Donna Seaman
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