(Part 1) - Legendary BILLIE HOLIDAY, née Eleanora Fagan, was born in Philadelphia, 100 years ago this past April 7. World renown for her voice and addiction troubles, she never quite conquered her demons. Just like Dinah Washington, Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse neither lived to see that 50th birthday. Holiday (44) Garland (47) and Houston (48) lives seemed to parallel each other. America was eating out of their hands, all experiencing, the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows. Neither of them ever, quite conquering their addiction.
Holiday voice is 'still' a jazz standard, the pain in her voice is what attracted the world to her. Known for 'God Bless The Child' ironically that song, never charted, but can be found on three LIVE recordings. Most loved her for darker songs like 'Strange Fruit' and 'Dint Explain'. After many arrests for narcotics. In early 1959 Holiday had cirrhosis of the liver. She stopped drinking on doctor's orders, but soon relapsed. By May she had lost 20 pounds. Friends worried finally convinced her to go a Doctor. On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York for treatment of liver and heart disease. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, under the order of Harry J. Anslinger, had been targeting Holiday since at least 1939. She was arrested and handcuffed for drug possession as she lay dying, and her hospital room was raided. Police guarded her room. Holiday continued staying under police guard. On July 15, she received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church, before dying two days later on July 17, 1959 at 3:10 a.m. from pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
She had been strikingly beautiful, but she was wasted physically to a small, caricature of herself.
In her final years, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, which was more than a million dollars, she died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person. Her funeral mass was on July 21, 1959 at Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. She was buried at Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx.
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