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 A
shoebox of interviews with Billie Holiday’s associates
has uncovered a wealth of details about the jazz singer’s
life, writes Gerald Isaaman
FOR some she is sheer magic, a melancholy voice and
sexual symbol that yanks at the soul.
Others shrug their shoulders, moan and ask what all the
fuss is about.
That’s the ambivalent world of Billie Holiday. Her
tragic life story has been romanticised into triumph.
She is upheld as Lady Day, the destitute kid from Philadelphia
who made it, at 14, to Harlem’s junkie background of
drugs, booze, prostitution, violence, crime and rampant
racism to become idolised as America’s first queen
of jazz.
She has already been the subject of numerous graphic biographies,
notably Donald Clarke’s Wishing on the Moon, published
a decade ago, as well as one movie which pulled out all
the sentimental stops.
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