Posted on 11/25/2020 7:31:02 AM PST by Kaslin
Philadelphia is the birthplace of U.S. democracy, the site of the first two Continental Congresses, the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the temporary capital of the new country, and the home of the barely palatable Philly cheesesteak. It was also the birthplace of Billie Holiday, who led a complicated life but became the outstanding jazz singer of her time.
Eleanora Fagan was born on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia but spent her childhood in Baltimore. She was the daughter of an unwed teenage African American mother, and her presumed father, who was a haphazard jazz musician. Billie Holiday in her “autobiography,” Lady Sings the Blues, in fact written by William Dufty, a New York Post newspaperman, says “mom and pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was 18, she was 16 and I was three.” But this was not the exact truth. The truth of her parentage is unclear. On her birth certificate her father is listed as someone other than the guitarist Clarence Holiday whose name she took. Her father was 17, her mother was 19, and they were never married.
One can dwell on her turbulent life story, miserable childhood -- raped at age 10, living with a cruel cousin, while her mother worked in New York. Eleanora dropped out of school. She was sent for a time to a Catholic reform school, the House of the Good Shepherd, an institution for troubled black girls. Afterward she lived in Harlem, working and scrubbing floors in a house of prostitution and her life that became marred by drug addiction, alcoholism, and marriage or involvement with a string of unpleasant men, pimps and drug dealers.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Breakdown of the family, unfortunately not addressed since Quayle.
Crazy, he calls me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMx-o4S0Ppw
Saw the movie “Lady sings the Blues” with Diana Ross as Billie.
Very powerful, very sad movie.
The first time you hear Billie you will never mistake her voice for anyone else’s.
A 13 year old Norwegian girl, Angelina Jordan, is the new Billy Holiday. Look her up on YouTube. She’s been singing professionally for at least 6 years.
Very versatile with a mature voice that is way, way beyond her years. A future Barbra Streisand for sure.
My mother was an intense Billie Holiday fan.... mom got to see her in lave in a club near the end of her career.. and as my mom describe is was sad as Holiday was obviously high on drug and gave a terrible show...
Billie Holiday also recorded as Lady Day to get around her record contract
We’re not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic.
Actually, at present we are neither a democracy nor a republic
The United States are a tyranny of lawyers
WHAT? He crazy.
Michael Curtis has not been to anyplace that made a decent steak sandwich. Clearly.
Shocking ignorance.
Happy Thanksgiving, prov and fam! Miss you!
Dittos!
See my email about P?
He most certainly, definitely is a veritable, incontrovertible loon!
No, I did not. Searched around, but no.
Not ok? freepmail me.
Incoming.
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