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Billie Holiday

BILLIE HOLIDAY

YEAR

2000

INDUCTED BY

Diana Ross (The Supremes)

CATEGORY

Early Influences

With her luminous voice, Billie Holiday changed jazz forever.

Her life was tough but so was she. Billie Holiday took her pain and channeled it into haunting vocal performances that resonated in your spine.

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Ariel Swartley

Billie Holiday didn’t just sing a song, she took possession of it.

And she repossessed it every time she sang. From the beginning, even in 1933 when she was eighteen, recording for the first time (with Benny Goodman), and “scared half to death” by the big studio microphone, she liked to move in slowly.

She would feel out the bones of a tune, lift up a lyric (something as mundane as “out of the frying pan”), shake it out, then smooth the words like a glove over the contours of her own heartache.

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Class of 2000
Lady Day, such an original, so authentic, no one like her.
Diana Ross
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