Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Eleanora Fagan, professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJazz Singer
Date of Birth7 April 1915
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.
Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.
Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.
Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.
People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.
I never sing a song the same way twice.
When you sing, always tell the truth.
Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.
I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.
New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.
You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.
I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.
Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.