She had a voice that she couldn’t deny. Her distinctive way of delivering her passionate songs was something that artists could work to possess but never quite accomplish. She was Billie Holiday and she was a vocal talent in the thirties and forties that many loved to hear sing out the blues.

Born as Eleanora Fagan, Billie Holiday was born in 1915. Today, she is still considered one of the greatest female jazz vocalists of all time. She had a somewhat disruptive childhood and it would be a childhood that would inspire a voice full of pain when she would later sing.

Billie’s father was Clarence Holiday. He played the banjo and sang but had little to do with her. Billie was persuaded to go to work for a brothel and she worked as a paid prostitute while she was very young.

After spending some time behind bars, Holiday would turn to singing. She lived off the tips that she made and eventually landed in a well known Harlem jazz club. She would become known for her music and songs like What a Little Moonlight Can Do and Miss Brown to You would become well known.

Her life at home was never easy. She seemed to attract the kind of men that couldn’t appreciate her and preferred to abuse her. By the 1940s, she was using drugs and by 1941 she’d married Jimmy Monroe. Soon, she became the common law wife of her drug dealer while still legally married to Monroe.

Holiday’s last studio recordings would be made for MGM. She died at age forty-four on July 17, 1959.