Billie Holiday (1915 - 1959) was one of the greatest song stylists in jazz although her style of singing was enforced by the ravages of drug and alcohol addiction that ultimately cost her her life.

When she was a preschooler, her father left the family and never showed any interest in her or her mother again until after Holiday became famous which she then returned the favor. Her mother was not much better, leaving Holiday in the care of relatives who abused her psycholically and physically. In 1928, she was finally reunited with her mother but was briefly jailed for prostitution. After 1930, Holiday began singing in a small club in Brooklyn where, three years later, record producer and jazz fanatic extra ordinary John Hammond discovered her and arranged for Holiday to record during three record sessions with Benny Goodman. To Hammond's credit, he also acted as her first manager, getting her gigs around New York City. This led in 1935 to Holiday's first r=major recordings with Benny Goodman's pianist Teddy Wilson with whom she made many recordings between 1935 to 1942 for Columbia and its affiliated labels. These were squarely aimed at the Black jukebox joints which, in turn, began getting rave reviews by critics across the United States, making Holiday a favorite of jazz musicians.

By 1938, Billie Holiday occupied the girl singer chair with Count Basie and, most notably, with Artie Shaw. The Shaw stay was very brief as was the Basie job but for different reasons. Mainly it had to with the fact that racial prejudices began dogging the young singer who had to be treated shabbily by all of the hotels and ballrooms. Then, with the Shaw band, her stay was complicated by the fact that she could not record with the band because they were exclusively to RCA's Bluebird division and Holiday was committed simliarly to Columbia.

But 1938-1939 was also another milestone era for Billie Holiday. She recorded what was then a highly controversial song named "Strange Fruit" about the hanging of African American men in the deep South. Columbia Records wouldn't touch the song and neither would its subsidiary CBS radio as they feared a backlash of monumental proportions from Southern radio stations and record merchants. It took Milt Gabler (comedian Billy Crystal's uncle) to take a chance on Holiday and the song. Gabler first recorded an a capella version, was so moved by this rendition that he later arranged for Holiday to record the song on the Vocalion label. The song became a hit with the more liberal listeners in high class retsuarants and night clubs. And here is that famous recording.