Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. elementType: "script", FISHER Satisfies the Appetite, Memorable and Best Forgotten Thanksgivings. MTT invited her to sing a program of Gershwin with the San Francisco Symphony and she subsequently became a Rounder Records recording artist and went on a worldwide tour gracing concert halls from Moscow to Lincoln Center and festivals from Umbria Jazz to Monterey Jazz garnering effusiveinternational press and many awards. Depending on whom you believe, she either quit or was fired. if ('' == 'left') Lipstick and brow pencil are the hallmark features. var popupParams = { elementType: "script", For some eight years in the 1970s, Kuehl interviewed everyone she could find who had a personal association with Holiday musicians, managers, childhood friends, lovers and FBI agents among. Her make-up is minimal. Intending to write a biography of Billie Holiday, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's life, but died before its completion. Being a solo act gave Holiday the freedom to record whats considered the most important and most controversial song of her career: Strange Fruit. Written by Abel Meeropol under the alias Lewis Allan, and released in 1939, the song is a poetically brutal commentary on racial injustice, particularly in describing the lynching of black people in the South. Billie Holiday. "[9] However, Kuehl did not complete the book. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { When she was released from jail at age 14, she left prostitution for good and set her sights on singing for a living. Her name is eponymous with the phrase jazz singer. There is no jazz figure so well-known, yet shrouded in mystery, as Lady Day. Holidays birth name was Eleanora Fagan, and she was born to teenage parents in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915. Line: 107 She changed her last name to Holiday to capitalize on her fathers connection as a guitarist with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, one of the most respected Black Big Bands of its day. var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb834ac'); Kuehl's parents were Sol and Ida Lipnack and she had a sister, Myra Luftman. setTimeout(function () { Her family, however, believed otherwise. Shortly after she became a professional singer as a teenager, Holiday began working with musician/producer John Hammond, who introduced her to Benny Goodman in 1933. captainformDomReady(function() { Holidays mother Sadie (who took an interested in her daughters career) was nicknamed Duchess. formId: '772606' Dcouvrez la bande annonce du film Billie : BILLIE HOLIDAY est l'une des plus grandes voix de tous les temps. } Theres plenty of performance footage, too, some of it needlessly colourised. }, true); var captainformCustomVars = {}; }, 50); Missing from this documentary is incisive exploration about exactly what makes Billie Holiday so great musically. jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 + wrapper.width() + wrapper.css('padding').replace('px', '') * 2); var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63c877fb829bf'); captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); formId: '772606' In the 1970s, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl recorded over 200 hours of interviews for a biography she intended to write about Billie Holiday. Line: 192 Consistently entertaining, Billie is really about the writer and subject of the . And by the age of 14, Holiday was singing professionally in nightclubs. popupTrigger.css('visibility', 'visible'); In 1928, Holiday and her mother moved to New York Citys Harlem neighborhood. In 1971, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. As a woman, Kuehl seems to instinctively know that Holidays last husband, Louis McKay (Holiday filed for divorce but it was not completed before she died), who owned the rights to Billies estate after her death was an unreliable hustler who was prone to say anything to interviewers as long as he was paid for the interview. } On 6 February 1978, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl fell from the balcony of a Washington DC hotel. The biopic will follow Holiday's life through the eyes of Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who as a fan and literary journalist in 1970 began a biography of Holiday. } Function: view, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/index.php That face! [3] She interviewed almost 200 peoplefriends, family members, band members, peers from 1930s Harlem, piano players, psychiatrists and a pimpand was still finding people in 1978. Holidays boxer dog was used as a way to transport drugs underneath the dogs collar. window.addEventListener('resize', function(){ popupTrigger.click(function(){ captainformThemeStyle['772605'] = ''; Can an author ever truly separate themselves from their subject? Pigmeat Marham and white record producer John Hammond (instrumental in the lives of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Benny Goodman and more) both claim to have discovered her. setTimeout(function () { type: "text/javascript", The film opens with footage of Holiday that I had not seen before. Billie feels typical, even if its attention to detail gives it an obvious appeal. That made her a target of the FBI. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites She never bothered anybody. And to the best of anyones knowledge, Holiday didnt sing while she was incarcerated. Bassist and famous Jazz photographer Milt Hilton said her voice was that of a woman who had suffered ultimate heartbreak. var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! "[9] However, Kuehl did not complete the book. Cafe Society owner Barney Josephson says that it wasnt unusual for white customers to walk out of the club and complain if Holiday performed the song. captainformThemeStyle['772606'] = ''; [11] "Police deemed it suicide, Kuehl having supposedly jumped from her hotel room, although there was no proof of this",[3] and her family believes she may have been murdered. When they reach the top, something tragic happens.. Jimmy Fletcher, an African American who was a narcotics agent for the FBI at the time, says that Holidays agent Joe Glaser worked with the FBI to arrest her in a drug bust for her own good., According to Fletcher, He [Glaser] confided in me that he wanted to save her. In the documentary interview, Hammond says, There was a real problem between Billie and Basie. Like the singer she idolized and identified with, Linda Lipnack Kuehl had her own bad habits, failed relationships and dreams unfulfilled. Using the countless hours of recorded interviews Kuehl left behind, Erskine has crafted a film around the jazz singer's life and the journalist's attempt to capture it. Kuehl was white, born in the Bronx and relatively prosperous. var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? if(typeof cfJsHost != 'undefined'){ Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. Like all documentaries there is never enough music and with a woman such as Billie who lived an expansive life in 44 years it would be impossible for one feature length film to cover everything. Linda Lipnack Kuehl was an American high-school teacher and arts journalist, based in Washington. Song list and samples here.She portrayed Holiday on stage in C.J.Verburgs play Lady Day in Love. View eatdrinkfilmsmags profile on Instagram, View eatdrinkfilmssos profile on Pinterest, BILLIE documentary is Actually Linda Kuehl on Billie. Then in the late 1960's journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); Courtesy of the Kuehl family. She tells us of her hopes and dreams in her own voice. So many people have rhapsodized about her voice that we often forget that for those who saw her sing live her face was also a powerful vehicle of emotion. Nalley combines music and history in her award-winningTributes to Ella Fitzgerald,Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Black Broadway. Her playElla: the American Dreampremiered in 2008 and can be viewed onEat My Shorts. resize77260663c877fb829bf(wrapper); Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies, Wondrous sounds: Billie Holiday in the early 1950s. This unusual, ambitious doc doubles down on the challenge, adding an extra frame to the portrait: the obsession that drove journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl to toil for years on an epic biography of . }); However, drummer Jo Jones has a entirely different recollection of why Holiday parted ways with Basie. Linda Lipnack Kuehl was an American arts journalist, based in New York City. The scene in Harlem was dense with famous clubs, famous musicians and a seemingly endless supply of white patrons eager to slum and see African American entertainment. The audio recordings in Billie come from the archives of New York City-based journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who died by falling from a hotel in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 1978. [13] Some of Kuehl's material was used in Donald Clarke's 1994 biography, Wishing on the Moon[14] and her interviews were used in Julia Blackburn's 2005 biography With Billie: a New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day. Raw and brutally honest, incredible testimonies from Charles Mingus, Sarah . } var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! To describe it any other way is to diminish her musicianship. Are you sure you want to cancel your membership with us? Culture Mix Survey She was raped at age 10 and sent to a reform school as a result. There are great archival photos of East Baltimore and of the reform school and the jail she was sent to. The 2020 documentary Billie, written and directed by James Erskine, pulls together reporting done by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who spent eight years amassing research and interviews including 200 hours of audiotape for a never-finished biography of Holiday. Then, before she could finish her biography, Kuehl died: In 1978, her body was found on a Washington, D.C. street. Despite her early hardships, Billie Holiday pioneered the refinement of microphone technique, minimalism, and jazz phrasing for subsequent generations. Maria Bryant, a singer and friend of Holidays, calls Levy a dirty, rotten, stinking bastard., In 1945, Holiday moved on to Louis McKay, who would become her manager and then her second husband. elementType: "script", Funeral services Friday February 10th, 11 A.M. Parkside Chapel, 170th St . 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