Book Description
Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.
Customer Reviews:
Red diaper tale.......2004-02-11
The book has an introduction by Hilton Als. In early 1939 Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit." It made the audience nervous. Someone clapped and then everyone clapped at the night club, Cafe Society.
Billie Holiday performed the song countless times. The song encountered great resistance. It was banned by South African Radio during the existence of apartheid. The song was written by a white Jewish school teacher from New York City, Abel Meeropol, writing under the pen name Lewis Allan. He is better known as the adoptive father of the sons of the Rosenbergs. He brought the song to Billie Holiday.
Billie Holiday embellished things in her ghost-written autobiography. Cafe Society was the brainchild of Barney Josephson. Meeropol felt that Billie Holiday was not comfortable with the song. Josh White also performed the song.
Lynching was a conspicuous theme in black fiction, theater, and art, but not in music. Lynching brutalized feelings everywhere. The U.S. Congress refused over and over again to pass an anti-lynching law. The performance on record is elegant and understated. There was a sense of inherent drama in a Billie Holiday presentation. The record sold ten thousand copies the first week by some accounts. The song made one sit up and listen and think. Hearing the record was an epic event for the fifteen year old Ned Rorem.
The title of the song was used by Lillian Smith for her anti-segregation novel. When Billie Holiday moved to the other jazz clubs "Strange Fruit" went over well. The book is part oral history. The collage style is effective. When Billie Holiday was depressed she added "Strange Fruit" to the program.
In the American mainstream "Strange Fruit" was too sensitve to sing. The song made its way into a song book used by Pete Seeger and other folk singers. The song was learned by a number of the red diaper babies of the 1950's era. Nina Simone performed the song in the 1960's. The book contains a 'Strange Fruit" discography.
Elegant Portrait.......2002-08-02
This book is an elegant portrait of a song, the woman who sang it, and the man who wrote it. It is a poignant look at the interplay between them all.I am not a student of jazz, and yet I found this book to be fascinating. It is as much about civil rights and human dignity as it is about music. Margolick is an amazingly astute observer of events, and he has an uncanny ability to describe what he sees in beautiful, elegant prose. This book would make a wonderful gift to anyone interested in jazz; interested in the civil rights movement; interested in Billie Holiday; or just interested in a little known profile in courage. Read it and savor it!
Tracking a legend.......2001-06-26
There are few songs in the world that stop you in your tracks and render you speechless of mind and heart. Billie Holiday sang one of them. The combination of her signature smoky vocals and the stark lyrics of the song written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx, proved to be spellbinding. Its emotional charge stirred activists and intellectuals and even popular notoriety. Margolick's biography of the song is a slim volume but full of interest, well-written and researched.
Strange Fruit, like Billie Holiday's Song, Moved Me!.......2001-03-04
Strange Fruit : The Biography of a Song by David Margolick, Hilton Als, moved me! I think Margolick did a great job of ferreting out and marrying an extensive array of first person accounts of people's experiences listening to Billie Holiday sing her heartbreaking ballad, enough so that I almost felt like I was there too at times! Margolick doesn't pretend his book is a historical analysis - it's a biography, and a short one at that. As such, it does it's job and will resonate with me, as does Billie's song. It would be to the historians that I would look for analysis of its effects on society - anyone listening? The book adds another layer of fine patina to an historical moment in musical history and illustrates how brave Billie Holiday must have been!
STRANGE FRUIT is no more than an appetizer.......2001-02-15
I was glad to see the announcement for this book, an essay on Billie Holiday's landmark song, "Strange Fruit." Margolick does a good job of describing the song's origins, its performance by Holiday and its initial reception by audiences and critics.
Unfortunately, there is little analysis of the song's impact on the African-American community or on American society in general. While the narrative is presented well, the commentary is often superficial: "Some African Americans...disliked the song because it portrayed blacks as victims. Others literally feared the song, thinking that far from enlightening people, it would stir up racial hatreds and actually lead to a new wave of lynchings." But which of the many views was dominant? Margolick provides some educated guesses but no real evidence. We see how the song affected particular individuals but not how it influenced the cause of civil rights.
Moreover, the purpose and scope of the book are never made clear. As a biographical essay, STRANGE FRUIT omits much of the context we would need to understand Holiday and her life. As a social commentary, it fails to marshal evidence in a cogent or convincing way. The author presents no critical evaluation of the song itself, and the book is ultimately more a tribute than anything else.
The unusual length of the book also makes it hard to categorize. It's more than a conventional essay yet less than a full-length biography. While the comments of those who knew Holiday are generally interesting, Margolick's attempts to synthesize the material -- to make sense of it all -- often seem forced, incomplete or even contradictory.
STRANGE FRUIT is strangely unsatisfying. Readers who want to understand the song's impact will be left wanting additional evidence and a more thoughtful commentary.
Book Description
Lady Sings the Blues is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon. We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.
Customer Reviews:
I still hear Billie singing, and I just finished the book..............2007-05-14
I have a deep love and respect for some of the most influential female jazz and soul singers of our time, like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Carmen McRae, Lena Horne, and last but not least, Billie Holiday. In LADY SINGS THE BLUES, Holiday recalls some of the most resonant memories of her turbulent past--the good, the [mostly] bad and the [frequently] ugly. From the very start, Billie Holiday (birth name Eleanora Fagan) born to thirteen year old Sadie Fagan and sixteen year old Clarence Holiday, had a very difficult life. The young girl saw much in the rough streets of Baltimore, Maryland, as a call girl, a jailbird and a spitfire with a vey hot temper.
Billie didn't even consider a career in singing, and her introduction as a vocalist was (perhaps) accidental, but definitely fate. Her descent into drug addiction, jailtime, turbulent relationships (with both men and women) and the great antipathy she faced in the storm of racism, jealousy and gossip made for a very adverse life, on and off of the stage. Some of the greatest moments of her career are documented here, as told to writer William Dufty. We learn the stories behind songs like "Strange Fruit," that are songs she created and truly lived and experienced, before setting them to lyric and melody. Though, I never heard Billie Holiday's speaking voice, I heard it throughout this piece, and I can see why it was brought to the screen, as a film. I haven't seen it, so I honestly have no idea how well it translated as a movie, with Diana Ross. Though, I have heard it was fantastic.
There is also a companion CD, that goes with the memoir, to mark the 50th anniversary of its original release (1956-2006). Perhaps that's why I had to take one star away from the package, as a whole. You really can't read a book like LADY SINGS THE BLUES and then hear other artists covering the songs that Billie really created. There is no comparison, even though musicians like Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds are featured on the album (doing a respectable job of STRANGE FRUIT). It's just not the same. Yet, if the CD was excluded from this 50th anniversary reissue, I would give the book (on its own) five stars, without hesitation. Highly reccomended!
Book---Slightly Boring, Billie--FAR FROM IT!.......2006-10-08
The only thing that saved this book is Billie's personality, which oozes off every page. I found it really hard to get through this book because it doesn't read chronologically---events are thrown all over the place and there are too many people named throughout the book (as if she just wanted to give them a shout-out--so that they could be remembered because she cared about people in that way) but its very difficult to keep up with so many names. It doesn't dig too deep into her drug habit or relationships...and some things are believed to be fictionalized so that the book could sell. Nonetheless, I have to give the book three stars because if anything, it introduced me to Billie. She was sassy, charming, real, and plain beautiful inside and out despite her life experiences. I'm very unfortunate to have not lived in that musical era...when artists truly sang from the heart with passion. I would have loved to meet her. In fact, after reading this novel, I feel like everytime I hear one of her songs, we will have a connection. You don't have to buy this particular book, but you should read up on her and try to listen to some of her music...just to keep her memory alive.
Amazon.com
The female blues singers of the 1920s, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and Bessie Smith, not only invented a musical genre, but they also became models of how African American women could become economically independent in a culture that had not previously allowed it. Both Smith and Rainey composed, arranged, and managed their own road bands. Angela Y. Davis's study emphasizes the impact that these singers, and later Billie Holiday, had on the poor and working-class communities from which they came. The artists addressed radical subjects such as physical and economic abuse, race relations, and female sexual power, including lesbianism. Ma Rainey was well known as a lover of women as well as men, and her song "Prove It on Me" describes a butch woman who dresses like a man and dates women. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism places the fluid sexuality of these women within a larger context of African American artists' attempts to subvert and recreate America.
Customer Reviews:
You would think our own would know the score. .......2006-01-31
No one with a true understanding of Billie Holiday would consider her a Blues Singer. As such to truly study Blues Legacies, it would be better if a Blues singer like Memphis Minnie, one of the greatest female instrumental blues singers, were included. Surely, Dinah Washington, justifiably named the Queen of the Blues, or Ruth Brown, (Miss or maybe now Ms Rhythm) would be more appropriate to a study of Black blues women.
This hints that the generalizations in this book may be the result of pushing around reality rather than studying it. This is an all too frequent problem in the writing of academics who seem more concerned about creating their own little niche of analysis, than situating their work in the realities of life, culture, and art where the blues or Jazz, and Billie's real life live.
Billie did not like to be called a Blues Singer. If we are concerned with the voices of Black women, then someone involved in this book should have at least had the respect to listen to Billie Holiday's voice on the matter. She considered herself a Jazz singer and later a cabaret singer.
She recorded very few blues. The two blues she recorded again and again "Billie's Blues" and "Fine and Mellow" were only recorded because in two different recording sessions there was time to record additional songs, but no preparation or charts existed for any song, so an easy to play blues was selected. Billie recorded them and performed these two tunes often because she had the author's credit and publishing on them which made it easier and more profitable. This is despite the fact that the exact word sets had been sung and recorded by real blues singers before Billie had the brains to record AND copyright them. Listen to Helen Humes sing an exact version of Fine and Mellow with another name during the first Spirituals to Swing concert that took place BEFORE Billie recorded her version.
A good contrast with Billie, though male, was her friend and often colleague Jimmie Rushing who served with her in the Basie Band. Despite his penchant for claiming he was a ballad singer as well--Rushing actually thought that when Billie left Basie that rather than hiring another singer, he alone could fill the gap--Rushing's recordings with Walter Page's Blue Devils in the 1920s, with Moten in the early 1930s, and with Basie in the 1930s and 1940s are masterpieces of the blues. Many of his renditions like Good Morning Blues have become standards for blusicians of all stripes. Lesser known but deserving more attention are his great blues recorded with KC musicians for John Hammond on Vanguard in the 1960s.
Otherwise she recorded few blues, particularly in her most artistically developed period between 1934 and 1945. Indeed, Billie's lack of a blues repertoire and disinclination to perform blues cost her her position as female vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra, a match made in heaven. While there were no doubt other factors involved, many Basieites especially Buck Clayton who was quite close to Billy have said Billie was replaced because she didn't perform enough blues to suit John Hammond who acted as de facto manager and AR man with the Basie band. Hammond replaced Billie Holiday with Helen Humes who had been recording blues for ten years before she joined Basie. Humes, of course, continued to record Blues with Basie, and then as an independent singer from then until her death keeping her magnificent jump blues alive for several generations of listeners. Clayton's complaint is a standard one leveled at white Jazz producers like Hammond and Norman Grantz that they wanted blues, not more harmonically developed music that Black Jazz musicians really wanted to play.
The blues is a specific genre of African American musical, poetic, and cultural expression with its own distinct history, evolution, and practices. Simply collapsing every Black performer into the Blues makes the blues meaningless and demeans the work of the millions of women and men who have created the blues in the last 110-120 years.
Another insult to Billie, is the tendency to see her as a "blues figure" because of her "tragic" life. This is the tendency to evaluate Billie as the public life disaster that she tended to milk in desperation in the last years of her life symbolized by the fake autobiography _Lady Sings the Blues_. This contrasts than the artistic consideration she deserved and received from other musicians and singers. She was a competent and practicing jazz artist, raised in the music business (her father complained he played guitar for every jazz artist in NYC in the 1930s and early 1940s but Billie. Her mother boarded musicians and catered musical parties). From a young age, Billie was considered as knowledgeable as the top instrumentalists of the music by those top instrumentalists.
Those who rely on the "tragedy" to induct Billie into the Blues express a greater ignorance given that as her own drug addiction advanced, her music had less and less of a connection with the blues, climaxing in "The Lady in Satin" which is a vain attempt to take The Lady into non-Jazz pop. All of her original blues were recorded in her pre-heroin youth in the 1930s, not in the 1950s when Billie's self-made "tragedy" had begun to destroy her voice and musicial viability and then her life.
It is quite bizarre for anyone to claim Billie's performance of Meeropol's song "Strange Fruit," has any relationship to blues music given her very straight reading of the tune, the unblueslike straight minor it is given, and the unjazzlike accompaniment. If one wants to see what a Blues Singer can do to this song, one needs to listen to the astounding version recorded by Josh White which is blusey and also more dramatic and satisfying than Holiday's more celebrated version. Holiday's performance of "Strange Fruit," tends to be elevated by folks for the justifiable political message the song provided and the controversy involved. However, an honest or even rational evaluation of the performance seems to be unavailable these days.
This raises yet another ignorance, the outsider's view that "The Blues" is always sad or "tragic." The immense body of the most popular blusicians--that is blues artists that Black people listened to-- of the 1930s like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, and Leroy Carr served up a bunch of pretty happy, often double entendre, blues. Blues music was overwhelmingly dance music, with performers not playing the three minute blues contemporary white blues wannabe's deduce from recordings, but 10 to even 30 minute versions of their songs for dancers from Juke Joints to the big ballrooms. Unfortunately, people who have never studied the blues as a real genre, misplace it as the solo moaning of the "existential Negro," rather than the jumping music of a century of African American Saturday nights.
As an African American performer of the blues and other Black traditional musics as well as a scholar of African American music tradition, this kind of non scientific, non-traditional, grab bag sloppiness about our music and our culture is a sign that even among our own, the outsider's false generalizations about the blues reign. You would think our own would know the score.
Poetics ARE Politics for many people. No exceptions here........2004-08-19
Davis work is a powerful re-reading of Blues women, and firmly places them in the center, rather than the margin, of Black oppositional and autonomous culture discourse. The book is mostly devoted to the work of Gertrude Rainey and Bessie Smith, but there are important sections devoted to Billie Holiday as well. In each case, the Davis argues for a more complete contextual understanding of Blues women music as introducing gender issues, breaking discursive taboos, and forging meaning within the context of an imagined community of Black women's lives.
To begin with, Davis convincingly argues that Blues women were on the vanguard in breaking down taboos concerning domestic violence and male subjugation, as many Blues songs concerned these matters. Davis uses powerful works such as "Rough and Tumble Blues," "See See Rider Blues," and "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair," to demonstrate that Blues women were willing to engage in oppositional, if allegorical, violence in the service of personal autonomy. Even man songs that seem to demonstrate acquiescence, even masochism, in the face of male abuse can be seen to have an ironic, subversive, or didactic quality that belies a simplistic surface reading.
Davis also takes on the common notion that Blues music doesn't include social protest, an interpretation that has been pushed by white commentators, such as Samuel Charters, and black commentators, such as Albert Murray. Davis argues that Blues music inherits from Slave musical culture a coded approach to naming and resistance that demands more than a surface analysis of the lyrics, and takes into account the role of music as a lyrical interlocuter. Focusing on tunes such as "Backwater Blues" and "Washwoman's Blues," Davis almost always effectively demonstrates that coded protest is still protest, and that women's blues historically anticipated and grounded mass movements in the areas of civil rights and feminism, while remaining linked with West African hermeneutic structure of naming and interpretation, such as "nommo."
In terms of Religious content, Davis forcefully recounts how women reconfigured a secular existential (or even "Devil's") music as prayer itself, magically and aesthetically conjured to exorcise emotions such as "the blues." At the same time, she harshly criticizes the Black church for adopting Christian dualisms concerning the moral status of body and spirit, which she sees as sexualized forms of racism and sexism--- since both blacks and women have been semiotically linked with earthiness and body as opposed to spirit by while male elites. Celebratory Sexuality, on the other hand, has always, according to Davis, been an oppositional aspect of black working-class consciousness. This extends beyond sexuality to an affirmation of Black folk religious life (such as Hoodoo) and crossing of class boundaries in the Blues, which Davis contends is a major reason Blues music was ignored and even distanced by Black elites during the Harlem Renaissance.
Davis's discussion of Billie Holiday is short (two chapters) but powerful, in which she argues that Holiday subversively appropriated the saccharine Tin Pan Alley love song format she was given as Slaves would have appropriated the English language upon their arrival in the North Americas. Holiday worked little in the formal Blues, but was nontheless grounded in the Blues idiom, from which she drew inspiration, and a subversive presentation of white romantic life to Black audiences. In this vein, such songs as "Strange Fruit" fit more coherently, and the ironic (and yet utopian) edge in her voice professes to the truth of Black women's lives, even in ways that on the surface seem to be feministically regressive.
There are isolated examples where Davis is less successful than at other times, but on the whole, her argumentation is strong and fearless, and her analogical and narrative analysis of the music along with lyrics adds, rather than detracts, from her argument.
Breaking ground.......2000-07-26
I have to agree with the reviewer from Turkey who wrote positively about Davis' "Strange Fruit" chapter in Blues Legacies. I recently wrote a term paper on the song Strange Fruit in which I referred to both David Margolick's recent release about Strange Fruit and Davis' Blues Legacies. I was very impressed with Davis' depiction of Holiday as an individual and an entertainer. It seemed that she brought a more well-rounded and objective perspective on the singer into the world of Billie Holiday biographies. Her take on the song and on Holiday's connection to it are, shall we say, refreshing, in that it takes a novel approach to the singer -- one that attempts to remain impartial to the popular image of Holiday. This book is also an excellent reference for those studying feminism, jazz, Afro-Americana and/or the lives of the three women (Rainey, Holiday and Smith) showcased in Davis' Blues Legacies.
A wonderful analysis of Strange Fruit and Billie Holiday.......2000-03-28
If you expect to read a traditional biography you may be dissappointed. The lives of the blues women and their political messages behind their songs are discussed in one another's light. This works very well as blues is a folk music which tells many things about the black experience and most singers are song writers themselves. The section about Billie Holiday and her song Strange Fruit is one of the rare approaches to Lady Day as an artist who gave a very important political messages about racism. In other biographies Billie Holiday is always portrayed as a victim rather than a person who had an important political message. I believe this very style of her portrayal could be discussed in a feminist context and that's what Angela Davies did in this book with her vast knowledge and experience in black politics and gender issues. Some people criticize the book for being overtly political. However, I see no other way of analyzing the blues without its political context. The transcriptions of the songs also gives a documentary value to this book. It has been a great reference for my research in this field. I wish I can get in touch with Angela Davies one day and discuss her about the research she has done while preparing this book.
Permission and Intent.......2000-03-07
Davis' title explains her project in clear terms at the outset. She is not engaged in a critique of modern women in popular music (as one reviewer anticipated). Nor is she profiling these women in biography format. Therefore, she does not need the permission of Rainey's relatives for this project. Her goal is to uncover the pre-feminist sentiments expressed in these women's music. In that regard, she needs only the barest biographical information (that women performers were not rooted to hearth and home, traveled, worked, and had marquee positions). Assuming this general information to be true of all these women, Davis then concentrates her primary energy on the legacy that blues lyrics leave for Black Feminism. Part of that legacy is found in the advice on romance, religion, and race that these women's songs shared (or share now) with black female listeners. I hope this gives readers an accurate idea of what to expect from this worthwhile book and encourages disappointed readers to re-encounter the book on its own terms.
Book Description
More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most gifted artists of our time–and also one of the most elusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life, Lady Day has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildly distorted legends. Now at last, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a writer of intellectual authority and superb literary gifts, liberates Billie Holiday from the mythology that has obscured both her life and her art.
An intimate meditation on Holiday’s place in American culture and history, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery reveals Lady Day in all her complexity, humor and pain–a true jazz virtuoso whose passion and originality made every song she sang hers forever. Celebrated by poets, revered by recording artists from Frank Sinatra to Macy Gray, Billie Holiday is more popular and influential today than ever before. Now, thanks to this marvelous book, Holiday’s many fans can finally understand the singer and the woman they love.
Customer Reviews:
A brilliant work.......2004-08-02
This is a brilliant analysis, rumination, meditation, on Billie Holiday. I believe the previous reviewers who did not agree with me missed Professor Griffin's use of jazz phrasing within the prose of her work, the reworking and repetition of themes to provide new insight. It is a technique that perhaps would only be understandable to a jazz lover, but it is part of the creative wisdom of this piece. This is the best work on Billie Holiday that I have ever read and I highly recommend it. And incidentally, Dr. Griffin is one of the most respected scholars of African American and American Studies, so she should never be compared to a first year graduate student. I suggest readers check out her other work as well.
Had Promise.......2002-10-16
Griffin's opening chapter is interesting and effectively presented, and by itself would make an adequate article on Holiday's life. There's not enough content here to warrant a book, and, in fact, it reads more like a first-year graduate student's paper than a text polished for publication. It seems that Griffin favored the copy and paste method here, repeating herself, literally, at times, in subsequent chapters, word for word, from previous chapters. This was not done to lend the text a wondeful insularity or elipticalness...I think she was just confused as to what to say and where to go. That Griffin adores Holiday is clear, but her worship of this Jazz Diva doesn't translate well into postmodern theory, and the pomo buzzwords Griffin sprinkles throughout the text seem to hinder her own understanding of and relationship with Holiday and to her music...Ultimately, the author ends up sounding disingenous and uncertain and not quite cognizant of the social politics she purports to examine and explain. Still, the glimpses we do get of Holiday stand out and shine marvelously.
Interesting but flawed.......2002-06-15
This book promises much but delivers little....which is a great pity since it could have been a much better book than it is. Part of the problem lies in the fact that it is not well written and is in severe need of editing. The book is repetitive in the extreme (see p. 181 for a glaring example - where we are told in two CONSECUTIVE sentences that Abbey Lincoln was under consideration to play Billie Holiday in a filmed version of Lady Sings The Blues). Other examples involve being told something, and then two or three pages later the same information is repeated. This is sloppy and shows that the author (or her editors) did not bother to proofread the manuscript in any meaningful way.
The other problem with the book is that it offers little in the way of insight. Sure the author has some ideas - but they are not enough to stretch out over the length of a book. It might have made an interesting presentation at a conference where it could have been presented as a 20 minute talk, but over the length of a book it becomes tiresome. Billie Holiday deserves better than this. Sorry to be so negative, but i bought this book with a great sense of anticipation and felt really let down by it. A real case of the critic not being up to the level of her subject.
Thank you for the insight.......2001-07-21
I'm a graduate social work student and I recently wrote a paper about Billie for a class on counseling creative clients. From a strengths perspective, Billie's life was a creative success. She lived true to herself and she lived for herself. Given the enormous odds she faced, as a black woman in that time period, she overcame much. Ms. Griffin has done her justice and I highly recommend her book.
Something to do Billie Holiday a little Justice.......2001-06-11
This book serves to show yet another side of Lady Day. Despite a tendancy to repeat herself, Farah Jasmine Griffith gets her point across eloquently. She peals away layers created by media, stereotypes, and the politics of her time that hide a complex, intelligent and more human Holiday. Fans of the Lady will enjoy this newest edition to the collection of writings about her.
Book Description
A lavishly illustrated biographical essay on the peerless Billie Holiday, drawing on never-before-published material
"Billie Holiday deserves a biography in which her musicianship isn't overshadowed by the tragic events of her life. O'Meally has written that book," says Entertainment Weekly about this absorbing and authoritative account of the greatest jazz singer in history. O'Meally emphasizes Holiday's artistry and training rather than her personal miseries, and he uses voluminous archival material to correct common myths about Holiday. Chronicling her rigorous musical apprenticeship in Baltimore, her reception in New York by Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, and her work with various musicians, particularly Lester Young, Lady Day is an impassioned testament to Holiday's genius that confirms her place in American jazz.
Customer Reviews:
Pure Genius.......2003-04-21
The reason this book is so powerful is the perfect
melding of photographs and text.
The author's rich, empathetic text makes plain Billie
Holiday's genius as an artist and, unlike some of the
so-called biographies of her life, don't simplify her to
the point of caricature.
Mr. O'Meally focuses on what makes Billie Holiday special:
her total mastery of her craft and her ability to share
her vision of the world through song.
It's her music that made her special. . ........2001-11-29
Tired of all the treatments of Holiday's life in film and print that forget it was her music that made her special, I was delighted to find Professor O'Meally's book. Fascinated with Holiday's life as musician, I had been routinely disappointed whenever I picked up a book or movie in hope of discovering more about her musicianship and less about the tragedies in her life. The book never loses its focus in this respect, making it quite unique.
What made this book even more enjoyable for me to read is that almost ten years ago I was fortunate enough to have taken a class taught by Professor O'Meally. His book conveys the same enthusiasm and passion he had for the subject matter and classes he taught and, no doubt, passed on to his students.
Well researched, with attention to her music.......1997-08-25
Probably one of the best all-round bios of Lady Day, covering the personal and professional. Pays attention to her musical preferences and reasoning behind her unique recording style
Customer Reviews:
lady talks the blues.......2005-08-19
this book is too well known to require my critique: if you are a fan of jazz or BH (or just like an interesting read), get it. However I consider it a pity someone couldn't have added a short epilogue giving Billie's final years, and beware the "revised discography" which is just a listing of her albums. The earlier edition had a full and proper discography.
inaccurate but honest........2005-07-14
I just finished reading this book and lstened to the 1956 recording of billie's concert at Carnagie hall. She i so honest about her drug use it breaks your heart, Oh, if only she had lived today maybe she woul dhave liked herslf more. I love Billie Holiday and you wil to after readign this book
Put back this autobiography within the context of its time.......2005-06-14
Long before celebrity confessions in magazines such as People Weekly, and when a pecadillo we'd find trivial today could still kill a career, it wasn't expected that a celebrity would ever tell the full truth about his/her private life. In Lady Day's time, almost all biographies were mere collections of colorful anecdotes and moral tales; true or not, few people really cared as long as they were entertaining. Anyhow, most readers would just shrug and give the book the benefit of the doubt, and enjoy the picaresque or sordid adventures of the celebrity, and nod with approval at all the morality lessons tough times had given the celebrity.
From what I've heard, Billie Holiday spoke to William Dufty and he put the book together based on her monologues. I'm sure that both Billie and Dufty wanted the book to be as commercial as possible; among other things, they found a very catchy opening with her Mom and Pop getting married when she was three... Yes, this is a lie, but by saying to the world that Sadie had married Clarence Holiday, she was just being loyal to her mother who had wished so much to marry Clarence in real life... and she was saving Sadie's face you could say since it was such a social stigma to have a kid out of wedlock until the early Seventies.
There's some evidence that Billie read the first draft of the book and approved it, even though she would claim later that she had never read "the damn thing".
Rather than expecting the full truth about her entire life, you should read this book to catch a poignant, vivid glimpse of Billie Holiday, singer and African-American woman, who was blessed in so many ways but also had to overcome so many obstacles such as we can barely imagine today.
I apologize for my shaky English. My first language is French.
brilliant.......2004-10-14
This is everything Aretha Franklin's autobiography should have been but wasn't. It is brutally frank, almost scary in its honesty. Nothing is glossed over, including her relationships with men ( and women ) her heroin addiction and her experiences with sexism and racism , both in and out of the music industry. I read this book in one weekend, I just couldn't put it down.
Glimpse into a unique life.......2004-07-08
Other reviewers have made the case that this autobiography is less than accurate. That may be true however I believe the book captures the spirit of Billie Holiday as well as the tenor of the times in which she lived and consequently it is an important and very interesting book.
The tragedy surrounding Holiday's life and struggle with addiction is well known and yet here it is dealt with in such a gripping and personal way that the story is moving and emotionally wrenching. Billie Holiday emerges from this book as a warm living human being with a remarkable amount of wisdom regarding her own struggles and failings. One would expect an autobiography to seek to afix blame elsewhere or excuse shortcomings. None of that is found here. This was an inteligent, wise and obviously talented though flawed woman whose story deserves to be told.
Reading this has rekindled my interest in her music and that alone was a great benefit I received from this book.
Average customer rating:
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The Words and Songs of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone: Sound Motion, Blues Spirit, and African Memory (Studies in African American History and Culture)
Melanie E. Bratcher
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0415980291 |
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This book explores the relationship between three African American women's dance-art-music sensibilities within the context of a Pan African aesthetic.
Book Description
"Mama may have,
Papa may have,
But God bless the child
That's got his own!
That's got his own."
The song "God Bless the Child" was first performed by legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday in 1939 and remains one of her enduring masterpieces. In this picture book interpretation, renowned illustrator Jerry Pinkney has created images of a family moving from the rural South to the urban North during the Great Migration that reached its peak in the 1930s. The song's message of self-reliance still speaks to us today but resonates even stronger in its historical context. This extraordinary book stands as a tribute to all those who dared so much to get their own. A free CD of Billie Holiday's timeless recording of "God Bless the Child" is included to enjoy along with the book.
Customer Reviews:
LAL Review.......2006-01-25
The illustrations are beautiful! However, the words to the song did not depict the story very well. The story needed more than the song to get the story across to the reader. I found myself reading the story twice to understand it. The age range for the story needs to be changed. "All ages" is totally inappropriate. In the classroom the teacher could use the illustrations to allow the students to create their own story for the book.
This is an excent book for kids.......2005-10-29
I bought this book for my 3year old daughter, 'cos I like to get her a little something since its really was her 7yr old brother's birthday. I didn't realize that it came with a cd at first. Both by 7yr old and 3yr old love the book and cd, they like to sing along at least twice at bedtime. We flip thru the beautiful pictures and sing along . . . by the way, what wonderful words to live by.
This is a great book . . . we've enjoyed every bit of it.
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade.......2005-04-18
There are plenty of historical fiction picture books that take place during the Dust Bowl. And plenty that talk about segregation and sharecroppers in the 1930s. But what there aren't a lot of, at this time, are children's books about The Great Migration that began in the early 1900s and continued up until the 1950s. Few adults even know about this momentous turn in our nation's history, and fewer children still. And while I'm still sitting and waiting for the quintessential Great Migration 5th grade text (preferably written by Russell Freedman, if at all possible), I'm pleased to announce that at long last we finally have a picture book that displays this most important of historical turns. Artist Jerry Pinkney has taken Billie Holiday's second most famous song (I half wonder if a "Strange Fruit" picture book is in the works) and given it a story. Now, the tale told here is not as cut and dried as some might like. But true kudos to Mr. Pinkney for even thinking up such a fine way to tell of a historical moment that deserves greater attention in our children's historical textbooks.
The song "God Bless the Child" is accompanied by the visual tale of a family of black sharecroppers living in the deep south. Their work, as we can see, is hard and their lives worth more than what they get in such a hostile environment. With the promise of work in the big city, the family packs their belongings onto the roof of their car and take off. On one two-page spread (with no words) we see their abandoned home with the odds and ends of their former life left behind. The next two-page spread (also without words) shows the car driving beneath an awe-inspiring scene of true gritty industrialism. An elevated train winds its way over the busy streets below. The parents of the kids get jobs working in factories and sewing shops. The kids shine shoes or clamor for ice cream. As the words say, "Money, you got lots o' friends / Crowdin' round the door/ When you're gone and spendin' ends / They don't come no more". We can see that the kid who was shining shoes on one page had money to buy his friends treats. But on the next page he apparently has no money and stares down from his building's fire escape to the friendless ground below. But life gets better and in the end we can see one of the kids going off to school to get an education and take the opportunities that will be presented to him.
I enjoyed the book a lot, but I did have a couple problems with it here and there. The story is an interesting one. I liked watching the family as the years passed. I was fairly certain that the little boy who wears a hat with earflaps and chases butterflies in the South earlier becomes the slightly older boy who shines shoes later (and may even be the boy getting an education at the end). But this is unclear. Pinkney doesn't clarify any of the family members. The parents are sometimes easy to identify (or at least the dad with the moustache is), but it takes some very careful and intense readings to figure out which child is which. I wish that the story itself had been clearer. If we are watching the little boy grow up and learn, it should be easy to understand. That way the reader gets a sense of satisfaction out of the end of the tale. But without knowing exactly who that kid is, you're left hanging. The ending of the tale could be any child which, while nice and all, isn't as satisfying as seeing a character you've come to care for accomplish something.
Otherwise, this book is lovely. The pictures perfectly capture the time period. The cd that comes with the book and contains Billie Holiday singing "God Bless the Child" is lovely. But don't try to read the book as the song plays. Pinkney didn't design this book to read along with the music. There are sections where Ms. Holiday immediately leaps to a subsequent verse and the reader has to quickly skip through multiple two-page spreads to catch up. Instead, the music's just a nice freebie with an already pleasant book. Recently I read through "The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle For Equal Rights" by Russell Freedman and wished that it had had the foresight of "God Bless the Child" and included a cd of its own.
So while this is not the best historical picture book I've ever seen, it fills a huge historical gap. Let us hope that other books follow its example, though hopefully with stories that are a little clearer cut.
neat book with cd.......2004-12-02
The book shows us what it was like for one African American family is the 1930's. The family starts out poor. They are a hard working farm family. The family makes a move to the North. Here they find a better way of life of their family and things start to look up for them.
The book included a CD of Billie Holiday singing the song that inspired the book.
We would recommend this book to teachers and homeschoolers who are doing a study on African American history. The pictures really help to bring the time period to life.
God Bless the Child.......2004-10-10
Accompanied by a CD of Billie Holiday singing "God Bless the Child" the reader is given a visual interpretation of the proverb "God blessed the child that's got his own," in which the illustrator has displayed the happenings of the Great Migration. Repeating the chorus of the song, we glimpse inside the lesson of making a way for yourself.
"Mama may have,
Papa may have,
But God bless the child
That's got his own!
That's got his own."
The illustrations capture the words in the story and serve as a tribute to our past as well as to those reading now who are committed to self-reliance and not only making do with what they have, but striving to become better. GOD BLESS THE CHILD is a wonderful book that I think children would enjoy, but more in a read-aloud atmosphere combined with the playing of the CD enclosed.
Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Average customer rating:
- SISTERS Give The Wildest Ride
- A fine survey of women whose lives were changed by drugs.
- Stick with the original. It's better.
|
Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience, Including Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, Billie Holiday, Nina Hagen, Carrie Fisher, and Others
Manufacturer: Park Street Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0892817577
Release Date: 2000-05-01 |
Book Description
• An anthology of writings by some of the most influential women in history on the often misunderstood and misrepresented female drug experience.
• With great honesty, bravery, and frankness, women from diverse backgrounds write about their drug experiences.
Women have been experimenting with drugs since prehistoric times, and yet published accounts of their views on the drug experience have been relegated to either antiseptic sociological studies or sensationalized stories splashed across the tabloids. The media has given us an enduring, but inaccurate, stereotype of a female drug user: passive, addicted, exploited, degraded, promiscuous. But the selections in this anthology--penned by such famous names as Billie Holiday, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, and Carrie Fisher--show us that the real experiences of women are anything but stereotypical.
Sisters of the Extreme provides us with writings by women from diverse occupations and backgrounds, from prostitute to physician, who through their use of drugs dared cross the boundaries set by society--often doing so with the hope of expanding themselves and their vision of the world. Whether with LSD, peyote, cocaine, heroine, MDMA, or marijuana, these women have sought to reach, through their experimentation, other levels of consciousness. Sometimes their quests have brought unexpected rewards, other times great suffering and misfortune. But wherever their trips have left them, these women have lived courageously--if sometimes dangerously--and written about their journeys eloquently.
Customer Reviews:
SISTERS Give The Wildest Ride.......2000-10-30
Being on the fringe of consensual reality and yet being able to take some notes of the journeys beyond, is an awesome gift. The stories in SISTERS OF THE EXTREME are such gifts of the God-Us. I have the original SHAMAN WOMAN, MAINLINE LADY and went through my contribution, line for line, and the only difference noted was my photo had shrunk in this new, revised edition. (This is consistent as now, being in my fifties, I notice that I am shrinking some also.) The tone not only is consistent from the first edition but vividly expansive. (I was somewhat embarrassed being in the first edition, with the stereotypic cover -- yet in this new volume, I am honored not only for the outrageous company kept and new sisters included but engaging graphics.)
As the God-Us dances about the universe, skirt swirling the galaxies, being on the fringes gives the wildest ride. This book is a travelogue by explorers of multi-dimensional realities written in white ink, from the heart of our Sisters-in-the-Clan-of-Encouragement: this book is a major herstoric contribution to the sext of human consciousness.
Jeannine Parvati (Baker) Author HYGIEIA: A WOMAN'S HERBAL
A fine survey of women whose lives were changed by drugs........2000-08-04
Sisters Of The Extreme is an informative and engaging presentation of famous female authors who write about the drug experience includes a variety of works from such notables as Bronte, Alcott, Di Prima, and more. Writings from historical works through modern times are gathered in Sisters Of The Extreme, a fine survey of the lives and experiences of women who have had their lives changed by drugs.
Stick with the original. It's better........2000-05-25
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat, Sisters of the Extreme is a "reissue" of 1982's Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady -- cut, streamlined and reformatted beyond all recognition. Evidently, the authors took the edge off their book for a more "conservative" era -- either that, or they assume their reader's minds have been so numbed by drugs that we NEED heavy edits and People Magazine-inspired "look" to hold our limited attention.
Sure, there are a couple of new excerpts worth reading (the one from Mary Woronov's "The Mole People is revealing), but for the most part, Sisters of the Extreme seems to be pandering to old YUPPIES who need a little stimulation. I swear that if I read ANYTHING by Carrie Fisher ever again, it will be too soon -- enough of the "I went to rehab and got a bad haircut" trip. Get over it.
In the introduction, the authors do say that they edited some excerpts for space and deleted others all together. When I got out the two editions and compared them almost line for line, I discovered a disturbing trend -- whereas Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady allowed one to take the writings at face value, Sisters of the Extreme has definite agenda. Sisters of the Extreme doesn't LIKE drugs. It doesn't want ME to like drugs. It wants me to be TITILATED by the writings. The difference is clear.
Sisters of the Extreme is a product of the times. It's been dumbed down and punched up. Sure, the authors include a couple of writings on sex magick and a few counter culture cartoons, but the overall smell of political correctness is stupifying.
The gist of my review is this: if don't already own a copy of Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady, go ahead and buy Sisters of the Extreme. Then, go on a quest for the Real Thing.
In the meantime, the use bibliography in Sisters of the Extreme to find and read the original sourced writings. You'll be glad you did.
Average customer rating:
- A Song of Despair that helped end lynching
- A powerful book about a powerful song.
- an ACCURATE account
- HOW COULD A SMART LAWYER WRITE SUCH A DUMB BOOK?
- Gee Baby, Ain't Margolick Good To Us
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Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights
David Margolick
Manufacturer: Running Press Book Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover
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Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song
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Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday
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An Equal Music
ASIN: 0762406771 |
Amazon.com
Our image of Billie Holiday is that of the elegant and melancholy jazz singer known for her haunting voice and immortal classics like "Lady Sings the Blues" and "My Man." But there was another song she performed that stood out in her repertoire: "Strange Fruit," a disturbing and impressionistic elegy to lynched black men in the South. Now, for the first time, New York Times and Vanity Fair contributor David Margolick uncovers the extraordinary history of this important American composition that few singers dare to perform to this day. For Margolick, "'Strange Fruit' defies easy musical categorization and has slipped between the cracks of academic study. It's too artsy to be folk music, too explicitly political and polemical to be jazz. Surely no song in American history has ever been guaranteed to silence an audience or to generate such discomfort."
Margolick reconstructs that discomfort when he details that fateful night in 1939 when Holiday first performed "Strange Fruit" at New York's Cafe Society. He also writes about the song's composer, Abel Meeropol (who later adopted the sons of spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg). For the author, "Strange Fruit" was a protest act on par with Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus years later, and he notes the influence the song has had on poets, singers, and writers as diverse as Maya Angelou, Cassandra Wilson, and Natalie Merchant. What David Margolick proves in this small but important book is that art can indeed move people in ways nothing else can. --Eugene Holley Jr.
Customer Reviews:
A Song of Despair that helped end lynching.......2001-12-27
How was lynching ever respectable? Why did nightclub owners discourage Billie Holiday from singing this protest song against the murder of innocent Blacks? How did this powerful, somber song become Time Magazine's Best Song of the Century?
David Margolick traces the history of Strange Fruit from a forbidden, banned song to a celebrated cry for civil rights in a concise style. Performers, club owners, reviewers, and activists are extensively quoted - and the differing perceptions allowed to exist next to each other without comment.
This facinating book should be carried in all public school libraries, read in courses on American music. It's a fine addition to the scholarship on the civil rights movement too.
I do have, however, one serious criticism. Somehow, even if in just a single sentence, Margolick should have noted the irony of sensitive, gentle progressive defending Stalin's regime. Several key people, great souls, involved in the early civil rights movement - including the songwriter of Strange Fruit - were members of the Communist Party during the Stalin's dictatorship. They were outraged at the lack of freedom for blacks in America, and their criticisms of Jim Crowe laws were totally accurate. I wish, however, that Margolick had at least mentioned - once - their blindness toward the brutal rule of Stalin in the USSR.
The vast, vast majority of these progressive activists recognized their mistake, and their committment to the Bill of Rights and individual freedom only increased.
Despite this minor criticism, this is a fantastic book that documents the great change in American cultural norms over the last 50 years.It's hard to imagine a time when Billie Holiday and Strange Fruit would be banned and lynching accepted as a Southern tradition.
Thank God for progress!
A powerful book about a powerful song........2001-08-24
It may seem odd to devote an entire book to a single song, but if ever a song demanded such an exploration, itÕs Billie HolidayÕs recording of Strange Fruit. Almost everyone thinks itÕs brilliant, yet few people listen to it often. Holiday makes this depiction of a lynching so real that the song is physically painful to listen to. To this day, itÕs rarely played on jazz-formatted radio stations. ItÕs too disturbing. IÕve always wondered how Billie Holiday managed to get it recorded in 1939. Did radio stations play it? And where did she sing it? I simply could not imagine Lady Day, with a gardenia in her hair, singing such a horrifying song to people in a nightclub while they sipped martinis. And if she did, how did her audience react? The fascinating thing about this book is that it not only answered my questions, it also raised many issues I hadnÕt thought about. David Margolick has collected comments and anecdotes about Strange Fruit and HolidayÕs performance from a wide variety of sources Ð musicians who worked with her, people who saw her perform the song at different time in her life, and contemporary singers who have recorded the song or performed it. What they say raises a lot of interesting questions about the relationship between art and politics, as well as the relationship between an artist and her art. The most fascinating Ð and shocking Ð thing to me was the number of people who worked with Billie Holiday who insist that her performance was a fluke, that she did not understand what she was singing. She was an uneducated, not terribly intelligent woman, her "friends" say, and didnÕt even know the meaning of the songÕs words. To anyone who has ever heard the song, that suggestion seems insane. The words are powerful, but it is what Billie Holiday does with them that makes this the most disturbing recording ever made. It is clearly a song with a deep, personal meaning for her. In the end, after reading the book, and hearing about how she performed the song throughout her life (sometimes sharing it with an audience she thought would be sympathetic, but just as often using it as a slap in the face to an audience she felt did not respect her), you canÕt help but see that what makes HolidayÕs recording so personal, so deep, is that for her it wasnÕt only a song about lynching, it was a protest against all kinds of racism, including the racism of dismissing a brilliant artist as one more empty-headed "girl singer." Margolick makes a strong case that it was the first cry of the civil rights movement that began more than a decade later.
an ACCURATE account.......2001-01-31
This thought-provoking and well-researched book moves beyond the racism and anti-Semitism that have fueled myths, misconceptions, and inaccuracies about its subject for years. Unfortunately, we see many of those those inaccuracies lingering still in a number of popular forums. Do not be duped; read for yourself and learn the truth:
1) Lewis Allan is a PSEUDONYM for Abel Meeropol, a well-known and well-regarded high school English teacher and composer. He also wrote "The House I Live In" (music by Earl Robinson) which Frank Sinatra later made famous. Allan and Meeropol are THE SAME PERSON.
2) Meeropol and his wife LEGALLY adopted the Rosenberg children after their parents were executed and remained their legal guardians ever since. Both Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael (who use the last name Meeropol) love and revere the Meeropols and consider them their parents.
3) The money to support the Rosenberg children was not raised by the Meeropols, but by a foundation, whose trustees included Shirley Graham Dubois, wife of civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois. The foundation existed PRIOR to the Meeropols' adoption of the children.
HOW COULD A SMART LAWYER WRITE SUCH A DUMB BOOK?.......2000-12-20
Stanford Law School educated lawyer David Margolick has appointed himself shyster for one of New York City's sleeziest historical figures of the 1930's and 1940's, Abel Meeropol, the guy who claimed he wrote southern author Lewis Allan's famous poem titled STRANGE FRUIT ("Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood on the root," etc.)
It's a poem about a lynched Black man put to bad music (probably by Meeropol) and made famous in torch song renditions by Billie Holliday and Eartha Kitt (and others).
The audacious Meeropol was no poet, but claimed he was, and even claimed copyright to Allan's poem. The fact is, Meeropol was a famous hustler, later noted for offering "shelter" to the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg and tearfully raising money to support his "cause" of "saving" the Rosenburg children (a New York judge put a stop to all this).
Mr. Margolick's book is dull and poorly written, claiming sympathy for Billie Holiday and lynched Blacks in the South, but actually dripping with Crocodile tears and cynicism.
It's amazing that a piece of crap like this could get into print, but the "Running Press" of Philadelphia has turned the trick, and offers the book for $16.95 ($25.95 in Canada). Don't buy it or read it. It's awful.
Gee Baby, Ain't Margolick Good To Us.......2000-08-08
This warm-hearted generous book captures the bittersweet beauty of Lady and all of her glory. In concise, translucent prose that sparkles, David Margolick tells of the song that forces Americans to face the stark and shared history that brings together black and white, jew and gentile. By honestly facing the wounds of racism and bigotry, prejudice and betrayal, Margolick offers a book that refuses to accept despair and embraces Lady's music as a noble expression of hope born out of pain.
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Strange Fruit
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
Strange Fruit
