Happy Birthday "Lady Day" Billie Holiday! April 7, 1915

Eleanora Fagan
American Jazz Singer and Songwriter
1915 - 1959

In celebration...
Columbia University's Radio Station
WKCR 88.9 FM
will broadacast 24hrs of Billie Holiday recordings,
starting midnight Sunday, April 6th until midnight Monday, April 7th.


"Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married.
He was eighteen, she was sixteen and
I was three."

"Lady Day"


"I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old."
"I hate straight singing.
I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know."

"Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy'
is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck."

"People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it."

"Somebody once said we never know
what is enough
until we know
what's more than enough."

"I never hurt nobody but myself
and that's nobody's business but my own."


Billie Holiday, 1954
Performing: Fine and Mellow

Harlem Sites Associated with Billie Holiday:

LENOX LOUNGE
288 Lenox Avenue
near 125th Street
Phone: 212-427-0253

APOLLO Theater
253 W 125th Street
between 7th and Lenox Avenues
Phone: 212-531-5300