Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 - July 17, 1959; born Eleanora Fagan Gough in Baltimore, Maryland, USA), also known as Lady Day, was an American singer generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time, alongside Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.

She sang with jazz greats like Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw - but it was her voice that was said to dominate the music of many others.

Holiday was working for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to a song entitled Strange Fruit, which began as a poem about the lynching of a black man written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym “Lewis Allen” for the work. The poem was set to music and performed at teachers’ union meetings, where it was eventually heard by the manager of Cafe Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday. Holiday performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939, a move that - by her own admission - left her fearful of retaliation. Holiday later said that the imagery in “Strange Fruit” reminded her of her father’s death, and that this played a role in her persistence to perform it.

She approached Columbia about recording the song, but was refused due to the subject matter of the song. She arranged to record it with Commodore (Milt Gabler’s alternative jazz label) in 1939. She would record two major sessions at Commodore, one in 1939 and the other in 1944. Although there were far fewer songs recorded with Commodore, some of her biggest hits were under this label, including Fine And Mellow, I Cover the Waterfront, and Embraceable You. “Strange Fruit” was highly regarded and admired by intellectuals, and was to a large extent responsible for her widespread popularity. It also prompted Holiday to record the kind of songs that would become her signature, namely slow, moving love ballads.

It was widely conjectured that this was the period when Holiday first began what would become a long, and ultimately fatal, history of substance abuse. Holiday stated that she began using hard drugs in the early 1940s.

Her personal life was as turbulent as the songs she sang. She married trombonist Jimmy Monroe on August 25, 1941. While still married to Monroe, she took up with trumpeter Joe Guy as his common law wife and he her drug dealer. She finally divorced Monroe in 1947, and also split with Guy. In 1947, she was jailed on drug charges and served eight months at the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution for Women in West Virginia. Her New York City Cabaret Card was subsequently revoked, which kept her from working in clubs there for the remaining 12 years of her life.

Like many artists, the importance of Holiday’s music and her influence were only truly realized after her death. She struggled against racism and sexism her entire career, and achieved fame despite a turbulent life. She is also often cited as an example to the black and gay communities, both of which admire her early efforts to stand up for equal rights, and to speak out against discrimination and racism. She is now considered one of the most important vocalists of the 20th century.

Billie Holiday was interred in Saint Raymond’s Cemetery, Bronx, New York in 1959.