Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [0]
A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1956 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.
LADY SINGS THE BLUES. Copyright © 1956 by Eleanora Fagan and William F. Dufty. Introduction copyright © 2006 by David Ritz. Discography copyright © 2006 by David Ritz. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover as:
Holiday, Billie, 1915–1959.
Lady sings the blues.
1. Holiday, Billie, 1915–1959. 2. Singers–United States–Biography.
3. Holiday, Billie, 1915–1959. III. Title.
ML420.H58A3 1984 784.5′3′00924[B] 83-22014
eISBN: 978-0-307-78616-6
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction by David Ritz
LADY SINGS THE BLUES
Chapter 1: Some Other Spring
Chapter 2: Ghost of Yesterdays
Chapter 3: Painting the Town Red
Chapter 4: If My Heart Could Only Talk
Chapter 5: Getting Some Fun Out of Life
Chapter 6: Things Are Looking Up
Chapter 7: Good Morning, Heartache
Chapter 8: Travelin’ Light
Chapter 9: Sunny Side of the Street
Chapter 10: The Moon Looks Down and Laughs
Chapter 11: I Can’t Get Started
Chapter 12: Mothers Son-in-Law
Chapter 13: One Never Knows
Chapter 14: I’m Pulling Through
Chapter 15: The Same Old Story
Chapter 16: Too Hot for Words
Chapter 17: Don’t Know if I’m Coming or Going
Chapter 18: Travelin’ All Alone
Chapter 19: I’ll Get By
Chapter 20: No-Good Man
Chapter 21: Where Is the Sun?
Chapter 22: I Must Have That Man
Chapter 23: Dream of Life
Chapter 24: God Bless the Child
A Fan-Friendly Discography
INTRODUCTION
I love this book.
I loved it when I read it as a jazz-crazed thirteen-year-old. I loved it when, at age sixty-two, I read it again last month for probably the fifth time. I am deeply grateful for the book’s existence, not merely because I find salty beauty in its prose and funky poetry in its candor, but because it brings me closer to Billie. I never met Billie, except in her songs and in the pages of this book, which, as it turned out, changed my life.
After that first reading, I told my dad, who had introduced me to Billie’s music, that I felt as if Billie had been talking directly to me, narrating her story across her kitchen table. But I was confused by a credit on the cover: “As told to William Dufty.”
“Who’s William Dufty?” I wanted to know.
“The man who wrote the book,” my dad explained.
“No, Billie wrote it,” I said. “She’s the one speaking to you.”
“I’m not sure Billie has the literary background to write a book. So Dufty interviewed her and wrote the book in her voice.”
“Did he get to go over to her house?”
“I imagine so. It’s his job.”
“Well, that’s the job I want.”
Five decades later, that’s the job I have.
Thirty years ago, when I started in the business of ghostwriting, a much misunderstood and underappreciated art form, I had two models—Lady Sings the Blues and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Were it not for these books, in which Dufty and Alex Haley skillfully and even mystically sculpt voices of undeniable authenticity, I would have never grasped the importance of getting out of the way and letting the artist live on the page.
Because it preserves the living voice of Billie Holiday, this fiftieth-anniversary edition of Lady Sings the Blues is cause for celebration. And because it has been the object of intense scrutiny, skepticism, and criticism, its longevity