GLR November-December 2024

BOOKS

Lady Day of the Night

O NE of the difficulties in writing about jazz legend Billie Holiday is having to separate truth from legend, rumor, and the often wish-fulfilling stories that she told about herself. Her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues , written with friend and reporter William Dufty, is called accurate “in the mythopoetic sense” by author David Ritz in his introduction to the fiftieth anniver

and was pursued throughout her life by law enforcement agencies, including the New York City Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and the U.S. Customs Service. Set up and arrested for possession while in a hospital bed during her final ill ness, she died in New York City in 1959. Throughout her tumultuous life, however, Holiday seldom made excuses or apolo gized for the way that she lived. Her unique vocal artistry made her one of the most influential singers of the 20th century. Alexander’s book is the first full-length biography of Billie Holiday since Donald Clarke’s Wishing on the Moon (1994). Holiday herself wanted to title her autobiography “Bitter Crop,” the last two words of her signature song, the still shocking “Strange Fruit.” Focusing on the last year of her life as a unify

R EGINALD H ARRIS

BITTER CROP The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year by Paul Alexander Knopf. 368 pages, $32.

sary edition of the book. Bitter Crop , a new biography by Paul Alexander, wrestles with this problem but concludes that there’s ample evidence to support the view that Holiday was fully bi sexual, having had a number of affairs with other women. The author of eight books, Alexander has written biogra phies of literary figures such as Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger and non-artists like political operative Karl Rove. For this biography of Holiday, he brings in new material unearthed from private collec

ing thread, Bitter Crop shifts backward and forward in time, moving briskly through the singer’s life. Thanks to Alexan der’s thorough research and the changing times, he could use previously suppressed material to produce a more honest look at Holiday’s private life and her re lationships. Men were drawn to her but afraid of living in the shadow of the increasingly famous performer. Holiday’s heterosexual relationships were often filled with ac cusations, arguments, and physical fights. “Come to find out she was a masochist,” re

tions and institutional archives, interviews with people who knew her, and material gath ered in the 1970s by arts journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl for her unfinished biography. Using these ele ments, Alexander attempts to restore dignity to a misunder stood and often maligned fig ure whose life has frequently been seen only as tragic and filled with violence and addiction. Many of the basic facts about Billie Holiday tend to reinforce this image of despair, with one lurid horror story after an other. Born Eleanora Fagan to a pair of unwed teens in 1915, in Philadelphia, she was raised by an aunt in Baltimore.

marked one of her boyfriends, bassist John Simmons. “She was doing things to make me fight her.” Using this classic abuser’s excuse, Simmons admitted to knocking Holiday out one time, and introduced her to heroin during their relationship. Holiday was much happier with women, and they did not abuse her. During her time with the Count Basie Orchestra, she was seen with other women so often that some of her fellow musicians referred to her as “Mister Holiday.” Basie, whose first name was “Bill,” gave her the nickname “William.” In addition to casual encounters, Holiday had two longer-term relationships with women. Sadly, both relationships were cut short by out side forces. She was one side of a love triangle with Louise Crane (of the Crane Paper Company family) and her partner,

Eleanora was mentored by madams and ran errands for the women in the neighborhood brothels. Raped by a neighbor at age eleven, she was by age fourteen living with her mother in Harlem. By the time she was nineteen, she was singing in New York bars and clubs under the name Billie Holiday. She married twice, had affairs with men, most of whom abused her physically and financially, and also had affairs with other women. Already an alcoholic, she got hooked on drugs Reginald Harris, a poet and writer based in Brooklyn, is the author of Autogeography.

November–December 2024

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