With Billie
Authors: Julia Blackburn
WITH BILLIE
“Wonderful.… Julia Blackburn is far too cool to come to any conclusions. She just lets Billie’s life glow.”
—The Washington Post
“An extraordinary portrait of the great Lady Day.”
—Elle
“Blackburn’s way of working her raw material into a narrative gives an impressionistic portrait of her subject, which conveys about as much that was true of Billie Holiday as can be had on a printed page.”
—The New York Review of Books
“Fabulous.… Blackburn has constructed a stage and invited everyone who ever knew Holiday to come and give a little riff.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“Compelling, impressionistic.… An overlapping, sometimes contradictory narrative which plays with the traditional idea of biography.… Billie is, by turns, vulgar, generous, kind, stoned, content to stay at home and cook.”
—The Observer
(London)
“Panoramic and intimate.…
With Billie
reveals … how singing gave [Billie Holiday] the strength to transcend at least some of the dark dissonances of her life.”
—Wilson Quarterly
“Blackburn, a sympathetic yet unflinchingly candid fan of Billie Holiday’s, had the artistically inspired and labor-saving notion of presenting most of Kuehl’s primary-source material raw, with a minimum of editorial intervention, allowing the heterogeneous quotations to represent the rich untidiness of life itself.”
—The Spectator
(London)
“Illuminating.”
—More
“
With Billie
puts her life in context, but it leaves us with multiple fascinating visions of Holiday.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A page-turning homage to the voluminous legwork done by intrepid jazz historian Linda Kuehl with Blackburn deftly weaving the disparate voices into a riveting, evocative narrative that lets the reader peek into the extraordinary personality of the great moaning singer.”
—Blues and Rhythm
“Through the words of those who knew Billie we hear her laughter, shudder at her outburst, and weep when she’s in pain. Blackburn’s insistent neutrality allows readers to fall in love with the beautifully tragic icon.”
—Upscale
“Although nothing is better than listening to vintage Billie Holiday recordings, this biography comes close. It is written with grace and sensitivity.”
—Tucson Citizen
“An effective tribute to Holiday in its rich tapestry of memories.”
—AllAboutJazz.com
“Compelling and intelligent.”
—The Nation
“
With Billie
brings us a rich context for understanding an artist who could convey all that heartbreak in the tiny confines of a three-minute song.”
—The Palm Beach Post
JULIA BLACKBURNWith Billie
Julia Blackburn is the author of several other works of nonfiction, including
The White Men, Charles Waterton, The Emperor’s Last Island
, and
Daisy Bates in the Desert
, and of two novels,
The Book of Color
and
The Leper’s Companions
, both of which were shortlisted 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.
Billie Holiday backstage
Photograph by George T. Simon (Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University)
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2006
Copyright
©
2005 by Julia Blackburn
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of The Random House Group Limited, London, in 2005.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
Blackburn, Julia.
With Billie / Julia Blackburn.
p. cm.
1. Holiday, Billie, 1915–1959. 2. Singers—United States—Biography. I. Title.
ML420.H58B53 2005
782.42165′092—dc22
[B] 2004058661
eISBN: 978-0-307-82921-4
Author photograph © Jerry Bauer
v3.1
… and I will sing, that they shall hear
I am not afraid.
William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Linda Lipnack Kuehl, whose research proved invaluable in the writing of this book, and to Avalon Archives for making this research available. I would like to thank the owner of the Linda Kuehl archive, Toby Byron, who was very kind and helpful throughout the time that this book was taking shape.
The Record Sleeve
W
hen I first heard Billie Holiday’s voice, I had just turned fourteen. I was at a party and everyone was much older than me and very drunk. Their movements seemed to have been slowed down; even the way they opened and closed their mouths was too slow.
There were two prostitutes at the party. One was a woman called Sally. She had short-cropped hair, but I can no longer find her face in my mind. She lived with a tall thin homosexual called Barry, who had huge front teeth and floppy black hair, and I can see him easily. They used to invite me over to their flat in Mayfair and they liked to show me a cupboard that was full of ropes and masks and whips. On one occasion when the three of us were having tea, a client dropped by, but Sally said she couldn’t do anything for him because she had a guest.