Billie Holiday

It's the birthday of "Lady Day," jazz singer Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore (1915). The facts of her life are fuzzy because she exaggerated or just made up much of her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues (1956). But there's no doubt that she had a difficult childhood. Her father left and soon her mother did too, to work as a maid, and left her daughter in the care of relatives. She left school after fifth grade and went to work, and she ended up in Harlem. She worked for a brothel and was arrested for prostitution, went to jail, got work waiting tables and sometimes singing as well. When she was 20 years old, she filled in for a better-known performer, and the jazz writer and producer John Hammond heard her. He announced that she was the best singer he had ever heard, and that helped to launch her career. She became famous for her bluesy, intimate versions of jazz songs, and she wrote some of her own, including "God Bless the Child" and "Lady Sings the Blues."