Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [1]
Billie has been blessed with a group of devoted students and scholars who have researched and reflected on her life. Each has approached her with passion, looking to explicate the entangled relationship between her art and her life. Each has begun with her music and Lady Sings the Blues. And even though the book has been castigated for inaccuracies and distortions, the book is—and will always be—the starting point for any investigation into Billie’s life. Like it or not, this is how she viewed herself.
A little background:
Billie met Maely Bartholomew, then married to actor Freddie Bartholomew, in 1947. The women became friends, and for a period of time, Maely helped manage and book Billie. In the fifties, Maely remarried. Her new husband, William Dufty, was a journalist and editor at the New York Post. He, too, became a confidant of Billie’s, and, in fact, Billie became godmother to Bevan, son of William and Maely. In 1954, Bill Dufty and Billie began working on her life story. In 1955, a first chapter and outline were shopped to Doubleday editor Bill Barker, who promptly bought it. In 1956, the book was published with a cover price of $3.75. The title proposed by Dufty and Holiday—Bitter Crop—was deemed too negative by Barker. A compromise was reached. In its first year, Lady Sings the Blues sold a respectable 12,000 copies. At the same time, Billie’s producer Norman Granz issued a tie-in album, also called Lady Sings the Blues (title song written by Herbie Nichols and Billie) on his Verve label. That November, Billie’s Carnegie Hall performance incorporated readings by Gilbert Millstein from the book.
A woman named Linda Kuehl was so moved by a recording of that Carnegie Hall concert that, in her seventies, she conducted almost 150 interviews of people who knew the singer. In addition, she amassed a great wealth of documents. Sadly, Kuehl committed suicide before her Billie biography could be completed. Other writers, though—some utilizing Kuehl’s research, some not—have contributed to our appreciation of Billie’s remarkable character. These include John Chilton (Billie’s Blues: The Billie Holiday Story, 1933–1959), John White (Billie Holiday), Robert O’Meally (The Many Faces of Billie Holiday), Stuart Nicholson (Billie Holiday), Donald Clarke (Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday), Farah Jasmine Griffin (In Search of Billie Holiday: If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery), and Julia Blackburn (With Billie).
Some of these scholars complain that Billie wrote the book for money. Well, Billie also sang for money (as did everyone from Enrico Caruso to Ray Charles). The implication is that her monetary needs overwhelmed her literary integrity. I find the argument specious and, moreover, incompatible with the book’s tone of urgency and undeniable passion. There is nothing gratuitous or glib about her views of her harrowing childhood, her mother, her lovers, or her relationship to music, heroin, and the criminal justice system. You feel that she’s writing—that she’s opening her heart—because she has to.
Billie was also accused of taking on the project only because she wanted a movie made from her life story. For a woman who renamed herself after a movie star—Billie Dove—that hardly seems unreasonable. And though it took sixteen years for Hollywood to make Lady Sings the Blues, the movie, beyond its cinematic faults and musical virtues, accomplished what Billie had always wanted: It kept her legacy alive. In fact, the film enlarged her legacy to an ever widening and appreciative international audience. Her book does the same thing. It makes her accessible and, at least for me, lovable.
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