With Billie: A New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day

by Julia Blackburn

Few jazz singers have become icons like Billie Holiday. In With Billie , we hear the voices of those people who knew Billie piano players and dancers, pimps and junkies, lovers and narcs, producers and critics, each recalling intimate stories of the Billie they knew. What emerges is a portrait of a complex, contradictory, enthralling woman, a woman who — contrary to myth — knew what she wanted and what really mattered to her. Julia Blackburn has pieced together an oral history of this jazz great, creating a unique and fascinating view of an astonishing woman.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, Jazz, Biography Memoir, African American, History

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Julia Blackburn is the author of several other works of nonfiction, including Charles Waterton and The Emperor’s Last Island, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her most recent book, Old Man Goya, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Blackburn lives in England and Italy.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

I'm in the middle of a horrible reading slump but this book was great.

With Billie is a biography that actually used interviews with the people who knew Billie best. So I felt like I truly got a better view of who Billie the friend was.

This book made feel so bad for Billie. She seemed to surround herself with a lot of users who didnt care for her. She allowed men to beat her because she felt that men should dominate women. People brought drugs to her while she lay sick in the hospital. She died never knowing just how amazing and loved she was.

If you've read Lady Sings the Blues then you really need to read this book, because that book was a sensationalized money grab(but it's still a classic).

A must read!

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Billie Holiday as Viewed by Others
Review of the Vintage paperback (2006) of the original Pantheon Books / Random House Inc. hardcover (2005)

With Billie consists primarily of journalist Julia Blackburn's selection from the archived taped interviews and transcripts by the eminent Billie Holiday researcher Linda Kuehl (1940-1978), who died before she could complete and publish her work. Kuehl recorded interviews with over 150 people on 125 tapes who had known and / or worked with Billie Holiday (1915-1959) from her childhood up until her passing at the age of 44. Kuehl's research forms the basis of every Billie Holiday biography written afterwards and also of a film documentary (see Links below).

The amount of material is staggering of course and Blackburn admits that she also had difficulty in attempting to fashion it into a convincing story line with many of the interviewees providing self-serving and often contradictory stories about the same events. Blackburn then decided she would simply present selections from the interviews 'as is' and include her own observations, bridging story chapters and footnotes to provide context.

The result is an all encompassing view of Holiday's life and career, which admittedly makes for sad and difficult reading at times with the amount of exploitation, emotional and physical abuse and persecution that Holiday suffered from various hangers-on, drug dealers, boy friends, husbands, often criminal agents, music club owners and the U.S. Government (esp. the Bureau of Narcotics). There is still enough light in the darkness, especially from the warm memories from her musician friends and in the descriptions of some of the classic performances and recordings. This is not recommended as a first Billie Holiday biography, but it should definitely be considered essential.

Reading With Billie continues my Billie Holiday deep dive which began with February 2022 readings of Billie Was a Black Woman (2021), Billie Holiday: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2019), Lady Sings the Blues: The 50th-Anniversay Edition with a Revised Discography (orig. 1956/reissue 2006) and Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth (2015).

Soundtrack
These were the main Billie Holiday albums that I was listening to while reading With Billie :
1. The Essential Billie Holiday: The Columbia Years A 2-CD selection from the recordings first issued/recorded 1935-1942 on the Brunswick, Vocalion, Columbia and Okeh labels. This is a 'Best Of' selection from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944, a 10-CD boxed set.

Double CD set cover image sourced from Discogs.

2. Billie Holiday: Ray Ellis and his Orchestra (orig 1959), the final album, some later reissues rename it Billie Holiday: Last Recording.

Vinyl LP cover image sourced from Discogs.

Trivia and Link
With Billie features an extended description of the filmed performance of the song "Fine and Mellow" by Billie Holiday and select musicians including Lester (Prez) Young (saxophone), for the CBS television program "The Sound of Jazz" in 1957. You can watch that excerpt on YouTube here.

The documentary film Billie (2019) dir. James Erskine also includes excerpts from the interviews by and footage of Billie Holiday researcher Linda Kuehl. You can read an article about the film here and watch a trailer here.

[Harold · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early 1970s a woman named Linda Kuehl began research for a book she wished to write about Billie Holiday. Her method was to interview people from all walks of life who knew Billie. She interviewed husbands, friends, pimps, hustlers, musicians, etc. Before she could finish the book she reportedly commited suicide, although some people who knew her suspected foul play. In the course of her interviews Linda had uncovered some very shady financial dealings by some very shady people involved in Billie’s life. For a detailed account on Linda Kuehl go to http://stomp-off.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-friend-linda-kuehl.html.

Julia Blackburn was given access to Linda’s interviews and after sifting through them decided the best approach was to simply select the most important ones and just put them out verbatim rather than trying to fit them into a cohesive story line. If they contradict each other in certain aspects so be it. That is , after all, how life is. The approach worked for me and the result is a highly readable, highly realistic portrait of Billie. Recommended for anyone interested in Billie’s music and life.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best unbiased biography I've ever encountered about Billie Holiday. The book was started in the 70's by would-be author Linda Kuehl, who interviewed more than 150 people from Billie's life face-to-face. Quite egnimatic herself, she seems to have possessed a powerful magnetism which made Billie's street-tough friends and associates spill out their hearts' stories; a few even professed to falling in love with Miss Kuehl. She tried to compile the book from tapes and transcripts of these conversations, along with salvaged scraps of Lady Day's life for more than 10 years, with little success. Tragically, Linda ended her own life in 1979 by leaping from a 3rd story hotel window during a Count Basie concert, never finishing what had become her life's work.
20+ years later, Julia Blackburn gained access to Linda's archives and started sifting through the haphazardly filled cardboard boxes. Eventually, she 'decided this book must be a documentary in which people are free to tell their own stories about Billie'. The result is a book where the voices are real, with Billie Holiday's world emerging as a tangible backdrop to a life cut short.
Next, I would like to read a biography of the mysterious Linda Keuhl!

[B · Rating 1 out of 5]

This may be a personal pick-up-put-down record.

In anticipation of the film "The United States vs. Billie Holiday," I wanted to read a biography on the jazz legend. Doing some preliminary research on biographies out there, I was... unimpressed. There wasn't much to choose from, and what was there had met lukewarm reviews. When a recent New Yorker article mentioned Julia Blackburn's With Billie, my decision was made for me. If my favorite news outlet was citing this book, it had to be the one to read... right?

To say this book is unreadable feels histrionic. Other people have read this book... so clearly it can be read... but... like... why put yourself through it?

Julia Blackburn decided to write a biography on Billie Holiday, and was given access to all the notes and interviews completed by prior Holiday bio hopeful Linda Kuehl. As Blackburn puts it, Kuehl never got through the first chapters. It seems, to Blackburn, that Kuehl lacked the skills to actually write the book, and was better at the information gathering portion of the process. When Kuehl committed suicide, her research sat for ~30 years until Blackburn came around to save it. What I'm trying to say is: Blackburn copied someone else's homework and also thought she did it better.

The fact that Blackburn throws shade on the late Kuehl is hilarious, in the most literal sense (that is, it's so amusing it threatens to drive one insane). Blackburn's book is a hodge podge of contradictory quotes from those who knew Billie Holiday or followed parallel timelines to the woman. It reads nonsensically, because Blackburn was unable to put these notes together in a cohesive format. Blackburn often jumps in with her own observations, which usually amount to "what you just read has been contradicted by people, so, who knows what is true," or "this person was clearly high/drunk when they were remembering, so, take this with a grain of salt." Great. Helpful.

Speaking of high/drunk, Blackburn is such a holier-than-thou shamer in this book. A lot of the people who were interviewed by Kuehl were involved with drugs and/or prostitution, and Blackburn is overtly sticking her nose in the air about this. Like, bitch, what do you expect? When you've been ground into the dirt by systemic racism and oppression, but you still need money to live, you have no choice but to turn to self-employment. In the 1930s? That looks a lot like drugs and prostitution. Apologize.

It's also clear from the text that Blackburn is judging Holiday for the fact that she often found herself in abusive relationships, going as far as to note that some people claimed Holiday enjoyed being abused. Blackburn, as far as I read, doesn't even try to unpack what this meant with regards to Holiday's feeling of self-worth or depression. Nor does she unpack the archaic outlooks on abuse that many of Kuehl's aged interviewees likely held. So, that's great and not problematic at all...

...

I've read oral histories before. Live from New York is a book I consistently recommend to people. But this isn't an oral history. This isn't even a biography. It's a hurried mess of cut/paste first-person anecdotes that are immediately contradicted by the next person. It's not clear if Blackburn was too lazy or just too poor a writer to turn this into an actual book, but lord knows I'm not hanging around to try and find out.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freaky. The author found audio tapes from another would-be author who did the research in 1971 to write a book about Billie Holiday. She transcribed the tapes of all these people, mainly other musicians, who are now dead. Noted is that the stories don't always match up and a lot has been told about Billie Holiday that may or may not be true. She mostly lets the different versions all be told in the hope that overall themes will emerge.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find there is a vast amount of mediocrity written within the genre of modern popular music biographies and autobiographies. One or two hit wonders seem to become millionaires, festooned in bling and lauded as musical messiahs. After a few years they're gone, only for the cult of celebrity to manufacture the next shallow sensation.
Julia Blackburn's 'With Billie' documents a different time, on another world in a parallel universe. The distant cosmic sounds from this era, although faint and almost indetectable, like the background hiss from some big bang, can still be picked up with sensitive equipment.
Here is a time travellers delight at the speed of sound revolving at 78rpm. This biography of the First Lady of Jazz, Billie Holiday, is told by so many distant voices, all now sadly passed. The story is chaotic, poignant, extraordinary and almost unbelievable today! Testimony given in resurrected interviews from family, friends, lovers, fellow musicians, music business agents, wheelers, dealers and stealers.
Out of this primordial chaos comes the story of a musical artist of the jazz era, who started out with little, and left the world with even less, whose sounds still reverberate across the vast expanse of time and space. Hence the term, far out!

[R.C. Waller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read about a tragic woman. Julia uses interviews, testimonials, public records, transcripts and recordings from many people who knew Billie Holiday over her lifetime. She allows peoples recollections to speak for themselves and doesn't try to sift through their memories for them, in order to get "just the facts." It allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about this tragic life. I came away thinking that as much as I love the voice, I will never understand what drove her to allow herself to be treated so badly all her life. One side of her was strong and intelligent and stubborn and bullheaded and another side was weak and self-degrading and insecure. My heart aches that she had no one to "pull her away" from the things that destroyed her. Great read, especially for jazz lovers, because there is a rich history included as Julia writes about Billie's interaction with so many of the great musicians of her time.

One aside - Louis McKay wasn't the gorgeouse, romantic, saviour-type portrayed on screen by that wonderful Billy Dee Williams. This book tells the real story.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Secular American culture in the 20thC has at least two passion moments before the King assassination. These are moments when individual artists achieve such apotheosis in relation to their subcultural audience that they're unable to survive the wider exposure once it becomes inevitable. One such passion, Hank Williams' career, occurs over five years and is done; the other, long, dragged out, and not unrelated to Williams', swept up Billie Holiday and takes something more like 30 years, though its crisis was reached in conclusion to the European War, and those post-war years of anarchism, bohemianism, racial revanche, and union-busting, c. 1946-1947. Both are vernacular musicians so to look at them together requires a narrow focus.

Nonetheless, you wonder how the story of this music would be told if it ignored what it made of this woman from the lower depths whose talent threw shade on all but two or three of the music's virtuosos (Ellington, Armstrong, Parker). Listen to the insouciance (a word I can tell you this white boy had to check the spelling of) with which Holiday phrases "Wait a while | til a moonbeam comes creepin' through" on the 1936 recording of "What A Little Moonlight Can Do." The timing, its magisterial indifference, combine to persuade us the singer is inside the music, another instrument, but leading the small musical unit and doing a kind of reconnaissance for it, an aspect we see again even when Holiday's not singing on the 1956 NBC special when she leads a small unit of Ben Webster, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan and others through "Fine and Mellow." Her place in the music seems to be drawing it out of the other musicians. It's shamanistic.

Like Williams, a prodigy, Holiday, the daughter of a prostitute and her john, a Fletcher Henderson guitarist, was doing this from about 1927 -- when she was 12 -- on. As Billie herself said, Julia Blackburn reports from Linda Kuehl's archive, she was born when she was three years old, when, resting in her grandmother's arms her grandmother died, so the child was returned to meet her mother again, who was living in Baltimore. For many years, her mother had little use for her. She came up in brothels, and was raped by the time she was 11, arrested in connection with it, and sent to live in a Catholic girls home. Therein a pattern is set: in each subsequent iteration of Holiday's crossings with the state in the form of the police, Church, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Courts, et. al. -- in each case, the refrain, "It gets worse" does not belie the trope.

Blackburn follows the child from Baltimore to Harlem, in 1928, where Holiday's beauty, her precocious rebelliousness, her sense always of creatureliness galvinized the speakeasy scene by the time she was discovered by John Hammond as an 18 yo in 1933. But herein lies the problem in Blackburn's account. The Thirties are a blank. The book doesn't even bother to cover them. Holiday's beginnings as a recording artist; her touring with Count Basie's band in 1936, and with Artie Shaw's band from the end of 1937 through the summer of 1938; both bands touring through the Jim Crow south, that the rebellious young woman could not (much to her credit!) hack; the return to Harlem as Europe goes to war and Bernie Josephson opens the Cafe Society in the Village in 1939; none of this will you be able to get a handle on from reading Blackburn's book. She does tell us about "Strange Fruit," but the rest she's left out. The South of Holiday's tours is the one through which, from the age of about 13 yo, Hank Williams begins to rise just as Holiday is calling crackers "motherfuckers." But you won't find it here.

Nor does the British writer well understand what happened to jazz music as America began to involve itself in the fighting in Europe and the Far East. As young American whites and blacks ship out for Europe, the scene on 52nd Street opens a subculture to the most adventurous of the new players, of whom this young woman in her late Twenties was among the best connected; but it's at this crucial moment in the music's story that the corruption, between drug suppliers, police, politicians, and managers begins to destroy Holiday, whose already steady diet of self-medication now came to include a needle habit. Under the guidance of Louis Armstrong's manager, Joe Glaser, Holiday got boxed into a corner -- fame, but at the cost of attention from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (with whom Glaser was in cahoots), whose draconian policies toward simple users liked to use the success of informers' clientele to bring publicity to the Bureau, just so Holiday premiered in a Hollywood picture, New Orleans, shot in 1946, just a couple of weeks before the Bureau busted her on narcotics charges and she was sent to prison in West Virginia in May 1947. This is where the story, as Holiday took a brand out on it in the early Fifties, her as-told-to autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, ends. The Blackburn book challenges this Louis McKay-washed version of events, usefully so. Blackburn just lets her informants tell it, and she does a very nice job of curating the materials. But there's this large gap in the account. So Holiday fans will need to look beyond.

As to fans of Williams, we must ask: To what extent is Williams' great revelation -- that talking blues syncopation he brought to country music -- owing something to the speakeasy phrasings in Holiday's Thirties records?

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. Chapter after chapter, the interviews were about drug use (everyone did it), turning tricks (everyone did it), and she was so special. Billie's various street addresses were faithfully listed in nearly every chapter, which absolutely drove me crazy. I just could not get into this book, and really only made it halfway through, if that. Maybe if I had persisted, it would have gotten more interesting. Your mileage may vary.

[Sacha · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that I "really liked" reading this book would be highly inaccurate, but only because it made me so utterly sad. I honestly can't listen to Billie Holiday songs right now without weeping. The tragedy of her life-story is heartbreaking. The racism, the drug addiction, the non-existent childhood, the beatings, the abuse and being utterly used and abused and rejected and shamed - oh my goodness. I have loved Billie Holiday for thirty years, and all this time I have never wanted to venture too deeply into knowing her life story, for the very reason that it's too sad. But now felt the time to know her more. I cried on almost every page. Today as I read the last chapter, describing an incredible couple of days of joy toward the very end of her life - recording with dear friends, other great jazz legends, I could barely see the words through my tears, for every one of these brilliant musicians.

I do recommend this book, but pack a handkerchief.

Like true folklore, I love Blackburn's weaving of the various interviews which creates quite a patchwork story of Billie's life, based on various opinions, memory & lost memory, drug and alcohol fueled memory and so on. This makes it feel really real, and I like that she didn't simply take "her favourite bits" to create a smooth chronology, and in some ways this leaves it to the reader to wonder still, just who was this great mysterious beauty? She died far too young but my only solace after reading this was that just maybe she finally found peace.

The author begins with her own intro to Billie recordings when she was a young teen, and then she discusses a young woman researcher who in the early 70's collects the interviews that Blackburn pulls from throughout the book. This woman, Linda Kuehl, committed suicide before she completed her biography. It is the valuable research of Kuehl that Blackburn acknowledges as making her book possible.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are at all a fan of Billie Holiday, then you will want to read this book. It is not your average biography; the author presents basic facts in a timeline up front, then proceeds to tell Billie Holiday's story through the words of those people who worked with her or knew her in other ways throughout her life. Most of the interviews were actually done in the 1970s by another person, who was going to write a book based on these interviews, but who committed suicide before the book went to press. Julia Blackburn took these interviews, did a great deal of work on her own, and has put them down in the words of those who knew Billie Holiday. Fascinating book and story of a tragic figure. I VERY highly recommend this one. My only complaint is that there's one picture in this book outside of the cover picture, but that's okay.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book about Billie Holiday told mostly through personal interviews conducted in the early '70s by those who were close to her. It is interesting to see where the contradictions and parallels lie in the telling. The reader gets a sense of Harlem in the '30's with it's flop houses, reefer-filled rooms, the music joints, one after the other, back when marijuana was a legal commodity. Oh to have known Billie then! Consistently described as kind-hearted to her friends with a penchant for men who treated her badly and her love of gin and the white powder. Okay, she had a temper and who wouldn't in segregated America back then. She had a hard life and probably was a difficult relationship for those who loved her, but she had a very special gift. It is a shame that she was exploited by those she trusted. There will never be another Lady Day. Great read!

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to judge. Blackburn's entire work is based on the perspectives of others, and thus, her personal style seems inconsistent. However, written as a 'new look' at Billie Holiday (without the preconceived ideas of Billie Holiday Blackburn claims other biographies have), I believe she successfully crafted a book with all of Holiday's conflicting records. I respect her approach; she sacrifices an extremist position to leave one naturally unsatisfied with all Billie Holiday's unaswered mysteries and personalities- I think this is fair.
It's important to remember that there is no hero and villain in her life. This book has allowed me to have compassion for Billie Holiday in every phase and face.

[Sarah Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through this terrific look into one of my favorite artists and women in history, my eyes were opened to the hard life of Billie Holiday. I was a naive 15 year old when I first discovered a love for jazz, and for Billie. I was blown away to find that this beautiful person with a voice so strong had allowed herself into a life of prostitution, drugs, and drinking. And I would have to agree with Earle Zaidins when he said towards the end that she may have probably survived "had this country treated her the way she should have been treated, given her the respect to which she was vastly entitled..."

This book is a truly insightful look into the life of one of our country's greatest treasures.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sources its material from dozens of interviews conducted in the 1970s by a previous would-be biographer, Linda Kuehl, whose extensive efforts unfortunately initially went to waste as no publisher would take the book on. Kuehl later committed suicide.

However, author Julia Blackburn managed to track down and listen to these interviews, which are summarized and quoted herein. Therefore, it’s largely primary source material - but this also means that it’s hard to know what to believe, as many of the people in Billie’s life have very different, contradictory stories - or simply ones that stretch credibility. For instance, according to one interviewee, Billie dyed her hair- including her pubic hair-- bright red, a fact he knew because before shows, instead of having a team of make-up artists and hair stylists prep her, she would hang out with the band drinking and smoking, fully nude except for her heels. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it certainly seems unlikely.

However, most accounts seem to agree on the broad strokes: Born Eleanor Fagan, she changed her name to Billie when she was 14, after the actress Billie Dove, and took on her birth father’s surname, Holiday. Her parents were very young when she was born (exact ages in dispute, but likely dad was around 16 and mom was around 19). Because of the closeness in age, Billie and her dad were like “brother and sister” laughing and joking together. He died when she was just 22, and it was said to be a crushing blow.

Billie had a difficult childhood, being passed around between various relatives and foster homes seemingly dozens of times, and going to group homes/juvenile detention 2-3 times as well. By the time she was 13, she was hanging out at her older friend/pseudo-mother’s brothel and “turning tricks” and drinking, smoking weed.

She had lots of boyfriends, but arguably the only one she ever loved was Bobby Henderson. Unlike the fast-talking, woman-beating men she usually went for, Bobby was a universally liked, kind soul she met when she was 16. He was clearly in love with her - he speaks of her so beautifully. He said there were times when she “let her guard down and she was like a little girl. It was as if nothing had ever happened in her life… she laughed from the bottom of her soles to the top of her head, plus some . . . she was very dainty and Billie was a full-bodied woman, but she was very graceful in anything she did. She was very clean, very neat . . . the way she handled a fork. We’d be in a restaurant and we’d be eating. Somebody would say, ‘Hey Bobby, what’s the matter with you?’ I’d say ‘Nothing.’ But deep in my mind I’m looking at her and saying, ‘You do things in a beautiful way.’” I love that.

Maybe this is well-known, but I had no idea that Billie was, possibly, bisexual (supposedly was a long-time lover of actress Tallulah Bankhead).

Eventually, Billie started using heroin, and that, along with her love of gin, contributed to her early death at age 44.

While With Billie is meticulously catalogued and cross-referenced, and I’m pleased that Linda Kuehl’s interviews were not lost from public access forever - I have to admit, it’s not the smoothest read. It was a bit of a chore to get through, honestly - so much of it was incredibly boring, repetitive, or inconsequential. Less a casual read, in my opinion, and more for someone with deeper academic interest in the minutia of Holiday’s life.

[Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.elargonauta.com/libros/co...
A lo largo de la década de los setenta, una joven periodista llamada Linda Kuehl entrevistó a más de 150 personas con el propósito de escribir una biografía coral de Billie Holiday. Kuehl murió en 1978, sin que esas entrevistas llegaran a ser publicadas, pero sus grabaciones sobrevivirían para acabar convirtiéndose en la materia prima de esta extraordinaria aproximación a la vida de la gran dama del jazz de los Estados Unidos. Con demasiada frecuencia, se nos presenta a Billie Holiday, de un modo simplista y sensacionalista, como una trágica víctima de sus propias excentricidades. Estas entrevistas inéditas nos ofrecen una visión mucho más profunda e íntima de su versátil personalidad: el relato de estos testimonios arranca con los recuerdos de quienes compartieron tan atormentada infancia, para desgranar posteriormente los recuerdos de quienes convivieron con ella en el Harlem de su juventud y la acompañaron en su lacerante ascenso a la fama. Amantes, proxenetas, músicos y agentes federales de narcóticos hablan acerca de cuestiones que trascienden los tópicos al uso que tanto han banalizado la contribución de esta gran artista a la música afroamericana. Kuehl complementa los testimonios y las confesiones de los entrevistados con datos obtenidos en los archivos de diversas instituciones sanitarias, transcripciones de causas judiciales, liquidaciones de royalties, listas de la compra, postales y correspondencia privada. La magnitud de esta empresa y la negativa final de los editores a publicar la obra pudieron con su salud emocional. Al poco tiempo, después de asistir a un concierto de Count Basie, la noche del 1 de enero de 1979, se quitó la vida y todo el material recopilado acabó en manos de un coleccionista. Blackburn, tras dar finalmente con el propietario de las cintas, dispuso de un solo día para poder realizar una selección del material y optó por dar voz simultáneamente a varios de los entrevistados en cada capítulo: “Quise conceder a cada uno de los entrevistados la oportunidad de expresar su opinión al respecto de las diversas cuestiones tratadas en el libro”. El resultado es ciertamente asombroso y confiere a la lectura el dinamismo propio de una obra teatral.

[Gerard de Bruin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dit is een van de merkwaardigste 'biografieën' die ik ooit las. Aan de hand van getuigen - hoofdzakelijk muzikanten, vask haar begeleiders - wordt het leven van Billie Holiday niet zozeer beschreven, als wel belicht. Dat betekent dat bepaalde gebeurtenissen, doordat de verschillende spelers verschillende belangen vertegenwoordigen en verschillende standpunten innemen, niet als feiten maar als mogelijkheden worden gepresenteerd. Vervolgens refereert Blackburn in haar specifieke wat afstandelijke stijl aan de manier waarop deze feiten via de reguliere Holiday-iconografie bekend zijn. Met slechts een hint van wat zij zelf vindt.

De getuigenissen zijn afkomstig uit interviews van de Amerikaanse journaliste Linda Kuehl. Zij probeerde met behulp van honderden uren interviews, door haar zelf afgenomen, Holidays biografie te schrijven. Dit mislukte. Uiteindelijk zou zij een eind aan haar leven maken.

Met een deel van dit, door een toeval vekregen materiaal, enkele eigen gesprekken en een tamelijk beperkte literatuurlijst, is een volstrekt uniek boek ontstaan. Een monument voor Holiday 'als mens', vrouw, muzikant, bewuste zwarte vrouw. Niet de Holiday als junk en slachtoffer. Al stuift de dope en klotst de drank nadrukkelijk door de hoofdstukken.

Must read, page turner enz.

[Kera’s Always Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very anecdotal account of the life of Billie Holiday.

Linda Kuehl spent years amassing this collection of information on Billie’s life, speaking to many, many individuals, but unfortunately met the end of her life before she could condense this collection of information into a book.

When Julia Blackburn was granted access to the documents, she put together this book with what she had to work with. I really enjoyed this kind of account of a life lived. One almost every page there are sources cited or notes of what was contradictory information.

It just felt very real. People remember people in their own ways and when you get info and stories from so many different places, things are bound to overlap and vary from person to person.

Billie Holiday was an incredible artist who dealt with her fair share of hardships. She was quick and fierce and I enjoyed learning more about her.

[Bailey Bridgewater · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a traditional biography, which is a good thing because biographies of Billie Holiday just don't seem to work - everyone has their own take on who she was and how she lived. Instead, Blackburn collects stories of people who knew her and devotes one chapter to each of their recollections. She doesn't try to reconcile discrepancies or figure out what's 'true.' It's fascinating to read all these people's ideas about Lady Day, though also important to keep in mind that many of them were using her, and some literally abusing her. Though there are countless interesting stories and details, at the end of the book, I had the distinct feeling that I knew no more about Billie Holiday than I did at the beginning. She's still shrouded in mystery, and that's clearly part of her enduring allure.

[MB Shakespeare · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finish this book. It is a mish-mash of someone else's research, neither organized fluidly or written well. Interviews of Ms. Holliday's friends, notes and quotes from other biographies and oddly placed history of the times made this book both hard to follow and boring to read. It did a great disservice to the memory of Ms. Holliday with hearsay and sloppy research. It reminded me of the author Marja Mills and her account of living next door to Harper Lee. Both authors are trying to take advantage of the greatness of those they wrote about. Sad for such an iconic and legendary artist such as Ms. Holliday...but so indicative of those who treated her the same during her lifetime.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book difficult to read, but that's okay, it is not meant to be an entertaining novel. I appreciate the effort and the work that these two women - Linda Kuehl and Julia Blackburn - took to gather that much information given by people who had met Billie Holiday, what a task!

Given that it cannot have been easy to put all this in context and make it readable, I cannot thank Linda Kuehl and Julia Blackburn enough to give us this kind of insight in Billie Holiday's life, may it all be true or not (for example: James "Stump" Cross says on page 147 in the book: "Mister [Billie's boxer dog] was a junkie, he was always high, Lady would shoot him up" - I refuse to believe this).

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very sad story of a musical giant

Reading this book is like watching an accident - it is horrifying but you can’t turn away from it. This is the unvarnished story of a unique American icon whose own self-destructive tendencies diminished her extraordinary talents. Say what you will, Holiday was a unique figure in musical history with a voice that can never be mistaken for someone else’s. Nor can her life story. I defy you to finish this book without shedding a tear someplace along the way. Rest in peace Lady Day - you certainly deserve it.

[Mick Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

a remarkable story,made joining by the fact is you only have to think of Amy Winehouse to see it's still happening with singers of value being used by hangers on.the book is written from notes taken by Linda kuehl,from people who had known lady day.each chapter is seen through the eyes of associates.and each see her a different way.shame on the men who used her for nefarious purposes and shame on the authorities who hunted her.that said she left a legacy long outliving those who used and abused her.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bastante mejor que "sus" memorias Lady sings the blues. Julia Blackburn hace un trabajazo con todo el material que recopiló Linda Kuehl. Billie no queda retratada como una adicta al alcohol y la heroína sino como una artista con problemas y un apasionado carácter y con muchísimo talento y bondad. Los hombres de su vida la mayoría unos auténticos sinvergüenzas, la verdad. Pobrecilla. Es la mejor ♥️

[Leila Kern · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a very interesting book. Using interviews with people who knew or worked with Billie Holiday, stories were pieced together of her life. It was heartbreaking at times to read; a woman who believed it was good for a man to show his love by beating her. A woman who felt she wasn’t good enough even with her talent. A tragic and damning lifestyle. A life cut short.

[eugenia benn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

I really enjoyed this book so much.This book makes me want to listen to some Billie holiday music.I am going to find a documentary on her to watch. Thank you for a good book to read.I will recommend it to others.

[Colby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd love to learn more about Billie Holiday but sadly it's not going to be from this author. :( Enough of the demonization of sex workers, shaming of poor people, and generally pitying tone.

[Margaret Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting

Still wondering what the complete truth of Billie Holiday and her the men in her life. Seems everyone remembers the same thing different.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poignant indictment of a corrupt system. Great storytelling, amazing research, wonderfully written.