Billie Holiday: The Last Interview

Billie Holiday: The Last Interview

Author: Billie Holiday

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1612196748

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The first-ever collection of interviews with the tortured but groundbreaking singer Billie Holiday, part of Melville House’s beloved Last Interview series Legendary singer Billie Holiday comes alive in this first-ever collection of interviews from throughout her career. Included is her last interview, given from her deathbed in a New York City hospital, where police were standing by ready to arrest her for a parole violation should she recover. Also included: The transcript of an interrogation by a US Customs official questioning about whether she'd violated her parole by using drugs on a foreign tour. But the book is more than a look at just the famously tragic side of her life. In other conversations, drawn from music magazines, late-night radio programs, and newspapers across the US and Canada, she discusses her childhood, musicians who influenced her, her friendship -- and falling out -- with the influential sax player Lester Young, why she chose the gardenia as her symbol, why she quit Count Basie's band, her substance abuse problems, writing songs and whether she wrote her own memoir, and more. In frank and open conversations, Billie Holiday proves herself far more articulate, aware, intelligent, and even heroic than the way she's often portrayed. This collection is an essential volume for all who have been moved by her music.


Book Synopsis Billie Holiday: The Last Interview by : Billie Holiday

Download or read book Billie Holiday: The Last Interview written by Billie Holiday and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first-ever collection of interviews with the tortured but groundbreaking singer Billie Holiday, part of Melville House’s beloved Last Interview series Legendary singer Billie Holiday comes alive in this first-ever collection of interviews from throughout her career. Included is her last interview, given from her deathbed in a New York City hospital, where police were standing by ready to arrest her for a parole violation should she recover. Also included: The transcript of an interrogation by a US Customs official questioning about whether she'd violated her parole by using drugs on a foreign tour. But the book is more than a look at just the famously tragic side of her life. In other conversations, drawn from music magazines, late-night radio programs, and newspapers across the US and Canada, she discusses her childhood, musicians who influenced her, her friendship -- and falling out -- with the influential sax player Lester Young, why she chose the gardenia as her symbol, why she quit Count Basie's band, her substance abuse problems, writing songs and whether she wrote her own memoir, and more. In frank and open conversations, Billie Holiday proves herself far more articulate, aware, intelligent, and even heroic than the way she's often portrayed. This collection is an essential volume for all who have been moved by her music.

Religion Around Billie Holiday

Religion Around Billie Holiday

Author: Tracy Fessenden

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2019-10-16

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0271087226

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Soulful jazz singer Billie Holiday is remembered today for her unique sound, troubled personal history, and a catalogue that includes such resonant songs as “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child.” Holiday and her music were also strongly shaped by religion, often in surprising ways. Religion Around Billie Holiday examines the spiritual and religious forces that left their mark on the performer during her short but influential life. Mixing elements of biography with the history of race and American music, Tracy Fessenden explores the multiple religious influences on Holiday’s life and sound, including her time spent as a child in a Baltimore convent, the echoes of black Southern churches in the blues she encountered in brothels, the secular riffs on ancestral faith in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Jewish songwriting culture of Tin Pan Alley. Fessenden looks at the vernacular devotions scholars call lived religion—the Catholicism of the streets, the Jewishness of the stage, the Pentecostalism of the roadhouse or the concert arena—alongside more formal religious articulations in institutions, doctrine, and ritual performance. Insightful and compelling, Fessenden’s study brings unexpected materials and archival voices to bear on the shaping of Billie Holiday’s exquisite craft and indelible persona. Religion Around Billie Holiday illuminates the power and durability of religion in the making of an American musical icon.


Book Synopsis Religion Around Billie Holiday by : Tracy Fessenden

Download or read book Religion Around Billie Holiday written by Tracy Fessenden and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soulful jazz singer Billie Holiday is remembered today for her unique sound, troubled personal history, and a catalogue that includes such resonant songs as “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child.” Holiday and her music were also strongly shaped by religion, often in surprising ways. Religion Around Billie Holiday examines the spiritual and religious forces that left their mark on the performer during her short but influential life. Mixing elements of biography with the history of race and American music, Tracy Fessenden explores the multiple religious influences on Holiday’s life and sound, including her time spent as a child in a Baltimore convent, the echoes of black Southern churches in the blues she encountered in brothels, the secular riffs on ancestral faith in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Jewish songwriting culture of Tin Pan Alley. Fessenden looks at the vernacular devotions scholars call lived religion—the Catholicism of the streets, the Jewishness of the stage, the Pentecostalism of the roadhouse or the concert arena—alongside more formal religious articulations in institutions, doctrine, and ritual performance. Insightful and compelling, Fessenden’s study brings unexpected materials and archival voices to bear on the shaping of Billie Holiday’s exquisite craft and indelible persona. Religion Around Billie Holiday illuminates the power and durability of religion in the making of an American musical icon.

If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery

If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery

Author: Farah Jasmine Griffin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0684868083

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The threads of Billie Holiday's mystique are unraveled in this study of a woman who needed to create art at any cost. Griffin liberates Holiday from stereotypes of black women and pries her away from the male tradition of jazz criticism while presenting Holiday's independent spirit. of photos.


Book Synopsis If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery by : Farah Jasmine Griffin

Download or read book If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery written by Farah Jasmine Griffin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The threads of Billie Holiday's mystique are unraveled in this study of a woman who needed to create art at any cost. Griffin liberates Holiday from stereotypes of black women and pries her away from the male tradition of jazz criticism while presenting Holiday's independent spirit. of photos.

The Billie Holiday Companion

The Billie Holiday Companion

Author: Leslie Gourse

Publisher: Schirmer Trade Books

Published: 2000-12-22

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780825671654

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26 writers, and Holiday's own interviews and recordings, provide an objective assessment of Lady Day's life, her talent, and her place among the legends of jazz.


Book Synopsis The Billie Holiday Companion by : Leslie Gourse

Download or read book The Billie Holiday Companion written by Leslie Gourse and published by Schirmer Trade Books. This book was released on 2000-12-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 26 writers, and Holiday's own interviews and recordings, provide an objective assessment of Lady Day's life, her talent, and her place among the legends of jazz.

Marilyn Monroe: The Last Interview

Marilyn Monroe: The Last Interview

Author: Sady Doyle

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1612198783

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"I'm so many people. They shock me sometimes. I wish I was just me!" --Marilyn Monroe Nearly sixty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains an icon whom everyone loves but no one really knows. The conversations gathered here--spanning her emergence on the Hollywood scene to just days before her death at age 36--show Monroe at her sharpest and most insightful on the thorny topics of ambition, fame, femininity, desire, and more. Together with an introduction by Sady Doyle, these pieces reveal yet another Marilyn: not the tragic heroine she's become in the popular imagination, but a righteously and justifiably angry figure breaking free of the limitations the world forced on her.


Book Synopsis Marilyn Monroe: The Last Interview by : Sady Doyle

Download or read book Marilyn Monroe: The Last Interview written by Sady Doyle and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'm so many people. They shock me sometimes. I wish I was just me!" --Marilyn Monroe Nearly sixty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains an icon whom everyone loves but no one really knows. The conversations gathered here--spanning her emergence on the Hollywood scene to just days before her death at age 36--show Monroe at her sharpest and most insightful on the thorny topics of ambition, fame, femininity, desire, and more. Together with an introduction by Sady Doyle, these pieces reveal yet another Marilyn: not the tragic heroine she's become in the popular imagination, but a righteously and justifiably angry figure breaking free of the limitations the world forced on her.

Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview

Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview

Author: MELVILLE HOUSE

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1612199682

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A provocative collection of interviews with the sublimely talented author of The Journalist and the Murderer The legendary journalist, Janet Malcolm, opened her most famous work The Journalist and the Murderer with the line: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” Ever since its publication in 1980, she only increased her reputation as a devastatingly sharp writer, whose eye for observation is matched only by her formal inventiveness and philosophical interrogations of the relationship between journalist and subject. Predictably, as an interview subject herself, she was an intimidating mark. In this collection, interviewers tangle with their own projections and identifications, while she often, gamely, plays along. Full of insights about her writing process, the craft of journalism, and her own analysis of her most famous works, this collection proves that Janet Malcolm is just as elusive and enlightening in conversation as she was on paper.


Book Synopsis Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview by : MELVILLE HOUSE

Download or read book Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview written by MELVILLE HOUSE and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative collection of interviews with the sublimely talented author of The Journalist and the Murderer The legendary journalist, Janet Malcolm, opened her most famous work The Journalist and the Murderer with the line: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” Ever since its publication in 1980, she only increased her reputation as a devastatingly sharp writer, whose eye for observation is matched only by her formal inventiveness and philosophical interrogations of the relationship between journalist and subject. Predictably, as an interview subject herself, she was an intimidating mark. In this collection, interviewers tangle with their own projections and identifications, while she often, gamely, plays along. Full of insights about her writing process, the craft of journalism, and her own analysis of her most famous works, this collection proves that Janet Malcolm is just as elusive and enlightening in conversation as she was on paper.

Bitter Crop

Bitter Crop

Author: Paul Alexander

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2024-02-13

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 059331591X

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A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop—a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.


Book Synopsis Bitter Crop by : Paul Alexander

Download or read book Bitter Crop written by Paul Alexander and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop—a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Author: John Szwed

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 2016-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0143107968

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"Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade ... jazz writer John Szwed considers how [Holiday's] life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy"--Amazon.com.


Book Synopsis Billie Holiday by : John Szwed

Download or read book Billie Holiday written by John Szwed and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2016-03 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade ... jazz writer John Szwed considers how [Holiday's] life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy"--Amazon.com.

The Billie Holiday Companion

The Billie Holiday Companion

Author: Leslie Gourse

Publisher: Schirmer Trade Books

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13:

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One of the most troubling, and troubled, artists in the history of jazz, Billie Holiday remains an enigma despite numerous attempts to eulogize, analyze, and criticize her life and career. This new addition to Schirmer's Companion Series provides an objective assessment of "Lady Day's" life, talent, and of her place among the legends of jazz.


Book Synopsis The Billie Holiday Companion by : Leslie Gourse

Download or read book The Billie Holiday Companion written by Leslie Gourse and published by Schirmer Trade Books. This book was released on 1997 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most troubling, and troubled, artists in the history of jazz, Billie Holiday remains an enigma despite numerous attempts to eulogize, analyze, and criticize her life and career. This new addition to Schirmer's Companion Series provides an objective assessment of "Lady Day's" life, talent, and of her place among the legends of jazz.

Biographical Dictionary of African Americans, Revised Edition

Biographical Dictionary of African Americans, Revised Edition

Author: Rachel Kranz

Publisher: Infobase Holdings, Inc

Published: 2021-01-01

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 1438198779

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For centuries, African Americans have made important contributions to American culture. From Crispus Attucks, whose death marked the start of the Revolutionary War, to Oprah Winfrey, perhaps the most recognizable and influential TV personality today, black men and women have played an integral part in American history. This greatly expanded and updated edition of our best-selling volume, The Biographical Dictionary of Black Americans, Revised Edition profiles more than 250 of America's important, influential, and fascinating black figures, past and present—in all fields, including the arts, entertainment, politics, science, sports, the military, literature, education, the media, religion, and many more.


Book Synopsis Biographical Dictionary of African Americans, Revised Edition by : Rachel Kranz

Download or read book Biographical Dictionary of African Americans, Revised Edition written by Rachel Kranz and published by Infobase Holdings, Inc. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, African Americans have made important contributions to American culture. From Crispus Attucks, whose death marked the start of the Revolutionary War, to Oprah Winfrey, perhaps the most recognizable and influential TV personality today, black men and women have played an integral part in American history. This greatly expanded and updated edition of our best-selling volume, The Biographical Dictionary of Black Americans, Revised Edition profiles more than 250 of America's important, influential, and fascinating black figures, past and present—in all fields, including the arts, entertainment, politics, science, sports, the military, literature, education, the media, religion, and many more.