“Me and my old voice,” Billie Holiday once told an accompanist. “It just goes up a little and comes down a little. It’s not legit...” It may not have been legit, but it was unforgettable and helped make her the most influential female singer in jazz history. Her friend and frequent collaborator Lester Young gave her the nickname, “Lady Day,” and she shared with him – and with her acknowledged model, Louis Armstrong – a great jazz instrumentalist’s ability to shift the rhythm, alter the melody, and uncover new meanings in any song she chose to perform.

The personal turmoil that shortened her life has sometimes been allowed to obscure the power of her singing. Her greatness lies not in the pain she endured but in her ability to transcend her suffering and transform it into art. “It’s not nice to think that each time she goes into the lights she’s crying her heart out,” the singer Bobby Short said after her death. “It’s nice to remember that she had a good time when she was singing.”

Strange Fruit

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