Billie Holiday: Most Influential Women In Jazz

Billie Holiday’s biggest influences in music were Bessie Smith and Louis “Pops” Armstrong; she admired the power that Smith had to interpret a song, and Armstrong’s music style. “Lady Day” became famous in 1939 when she recorded “Strange Fruit”, which is song that protests against the lynching of African Americans in the United States (The Biography.com website). A year later, in 1940 she recorded a new version of “All of Me”. This song which was written in 1931 by Seymour Simons and Gerald Marks, is one of the most popular songs from the 1930s. When we listen to Holiday’s version of the song, we are able to hear her ability to tell her own story through the lyrics of the song. Billie Holiday’s interpretation of the song demonstrates how

Billie Holiday lived a tumultuous life as she went through many ups and downs during her childhood and into her adulthood. Billie Holiday was only eighteen years old when she was discovered singing in nightclubs and soon found great success as a jazz singer. In spite of her lack of musical training, Holiday’s distinct singing caught the attention of her audience and she became one of the greatest jazz singers of the twentieth century. However, despite the remarkable success Billie achieved, she continuously battled with substance abuse until the end of her life. Holiday may have had a tragic life, but her emotional, melancholic voice made her an imperative presence in the period of jazz.

Eleanor Feagan, most commonly known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter who had a career lasting nearly 30 years. The way she sang had been strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists and introduced a new way of controlling phrasing and tempo. She carried an abundant amount of emotion and character in her voice, in addition to her material. Holiday is one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time and has had an everlasting influence on American music.

In 1915, a woman who would shape the meaning of jazz was born. Her name was Billie Holiday. Her life was marked by tumult and poverty; however, through the many hardships she faced, she remained strong and determined. Today, she is regarded as one of the best jazz vocalists of all time. Her renowned voice was distinct due to her abundant use different tones and with her ever changing range. In addition, Billie took the pain that she experienced throughout her life and conveyed it through song. Influential to jazz, Billie Holiday’s life and her music have continued to impact music and artists even now.

Billie Holiday is one of the most influential jazz singers of her time. Her attitude, determination and most of all her music inspired artists throughout time and inspired major social change. Throughout her lifetime she explored the world of jazz, her identity, and how far the limits of her talent would take her. She exchanged her poor life, full of drugs and scandal for a life of performing the arts and showcasing her talents and abilities. Her incredible determination led her to do what she loved regardless of what anyone thought , which led to her inciting major social exchange; moving black suffering into white consciousness.

This main claim of this article is that the sexual legislative issues of women’s blues singers of the 1920s and relates it to African American women’s ' fiction around that same time frame. Carby also claims that great soul vocalists such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ethel Waters had more insight to contest society led by men and uncover the disagreements of African American women’s ' experience than African American essayists. As Hazel V. Carby has illustrated, women blues artists were for the most part disregarded by the black middle classes, particularly women who saw blues as a declaration of the most corrupted or regressive parts of African-American life. With the National Association of Colored Women and the Black Women movement,

The genre of blues exploded into the blues craze during the 1920’s. During this time, white record producers saw the untapped goldmine that was blues music performed by people of color. Ma Rainey was one of them, and to some, one of the first, giving her the title, ‘The Mother of Blues’. The 1920’s was not only an era of continuing homophobia from the past (although that would change, briefly, into a mild form of acceptance until the more conservative 1930’s), but also of harsh racism. And yet, one singer, Ma Rainey’s, broke these restrictions.

Often referred to as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was one of the most popular female jazz singers in the United States. Throughout her career, Ella was awarded thirteen Grammys and sold over 40 million albums. With a voice that not only encompassed a large range, but a dynamic and powerful sound, Ella could sing almost anything from scatting to the popular tunes of her day. She performed in the top venues all around the world to packed houses, with audiences as diverse as the music she created. Ella came from a small town and impoverished family, but through her talent and determination, skyrocketed to fame creating a legacy that has withstood the sands of time.

Nina said she would not perform unless her parents were at the front. That was the first time she felt discrimination. Then on September 15, 1963, Birmingham Bombings triggered something into Nina. She began to make a song ‘Mississippi, Goddam’. This song revolutionized the Civil Rights movement, being the only one to truly express how they feel about these bombings.

Ella Fitzgerald, also known as “The First Lady of Song” or “Lady Ella”, was an extraordinary singer highly known in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Virginia then moving to New York, Ella grew up during the 1920s and got her breakthrough in the early 1930s. She joined an orchestra and produced her first number one single, A-Tisket, A-Tasket. Ella’s contributions to the Harlem Renaissance included not only her songs, but her appearances in movies such as. Ella Fitzgerald is shaped into the woman that she once was through her background, accomplishments, challenges and hardships; she also leaves a legacy that would continue on to influence many generations to come.

These events were very important in history because Billie became one of the very first black women to work with a white orchestra. Unfortunately, promoters were opposed to Billie for her race and unique vocal style and left Artie Shaw’s orchestra out of

She had become the first African American performer to sign a contract with a major studio, but she wanted to accomplish more than that. She wanted to be a voice for African Americans who were also trying to receive equality. “When I went to the south and met the kind of people who were fighting in such an unglamorous fashion, I mean, fighting to just get someplace to sit and get a sandwich. I felt close to that kind of thing because I had denied it and had been left away from it so long. And I began to feel such pain again.

The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying on-stage

Duke Ellington was a jazz author, conductor, and entertainer amid the Harlem Renaissance. During the developmental Cotton Club years, he explored different avenues regarding and built up the style that would rapidly bring him overall achievement. Ellington would be among the first to concentrate on melodic shape and sythesis in jazz. Ellington composed more than 2000 pieces in his lifetime.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the song that put on her on the charts, Aretha Franklin, one of the most influential female artists of all time is the artist that interest me the most. With her vocals a mixture of jazz and rhythm & blues, Aretha gained fame. Her vocals were so good, that it made her to have hit records over five years, which later on in her career, cause her to be inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame. Also giving her the title “The Queen of Soul”. Like most artists today, Franklin got her career started by singing gospel, and from gospel to pop and R&B.