Billie Holiday
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Year:
2000
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Inducted by:
Diana Ross (The Supremes)
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Category:
Early Influences
Introduction
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.
Diana Ross Inducts Billie Holiday
Diana Ross Inducts Billie Holiday at the 2000 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony-
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Diana Ross Inducts Billie Holiday00:03:30 -
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Mifflin Hayes Accepts On Behalf oF Billie Holiday00:01:42 -
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"Strange Fruit"00:01:36 -
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"God Bless the Child"00:04:38
Hall of Fame Essay
2000
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.
Lady Day, such an original, so authentic, no one like her.
