How she changed the way singers perform and communicate.
Billie Holiday is widely regarded as the greatest jazz singer of all time, and had a huge impact on singers in popular music in general, and jazz in particular. Holiday’s career was at its height from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s. Despite her peak lasting just over two decades, she changed the face of American music.
Holiday’s achievements were not only based on her vocal style, but also her extraordinary life story, which was heavily touched by racism, drug addiction, and many other personal struggles. One of the things that made her great was how she channeled her suffering into deeply moving and memorable vocal performances. Yet Holiday was not a victim. She was tough, and has been described as the “wild woman of jazz.”
Holiday was a pioneer who changed music in a time before her and a time after her, and her impact continues. In the decades since her death in 1959, at the age of 44, Holiday won a total of five Grammy Awards, including Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, in 1987. In 2000, Holiday was inducted in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame by Diana Ross in the Early Influences category. And in 2011, Holiday was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame
As time passed, the significance of Billie Holiday was increasingly recognized. Her personal story was in many ways a reflection of the cruelty and hardship that the African-America segment of the US population had to endure, while her greatness lay in the way she transcended this.
Most of all there’s her voice. Like with her life, the most striking aspect is how she used her limitations in a magnificent way. As mentioned earlier, she was the first singer who made her voice sound like a musical instrument, using phrasing and timing to work with or against the beat. She used the possibilities that were opened up by amplification to her advantage and sang in an intensely intimate, confessional manner, full of nuance and detail.
Most of all, she was a powerful story teller. She told the story of every song in ways that were incredibly profound, and as if she had lived through each phrase herself. When Holiday sings, listeners hang on her lips, taking in every word, and every nuance of how she sings it. In many ways, she was the first fully modern singer. More than 62 years after her passing, Holiday’s performances still sound fresh and contemporary.
