Listen Live
WOLB Featured Video
CLOSE

1915 – Born Elinore Harris on April 7, at Philadelphia General Hospital, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Sarah Harris (later named Sadie Fagan). While her birth certificate names Frank DeViese as her father, she considered Clarence Holiday to be her father.

1925- At about the age of 10 or 11 years old, she is raped and then sent to The House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, a jail-like Catholic reformatory institution, for 2 years.

1926- After finishing up the fifth grade in Baltimore, she joins her mother in New York and takes a job as a maid. She is soon living in Harlem and working as a prostitute at a whorehouse.

1931 – Desperate for money, she applies for a job as a dancer at the Harlem jazz club Pod’s and Jerry’s and performs miserably but is impressive as a singer. During her stint at the club, she refuses to pick up tips using her body and is teased by the other women and nicknamed “Duchess” and “Lady”. Around this time she changes her name to Billie Holiday, after her favorite actress Billie Dove and her father Clarence Holiday, a guitarist with the Fletcher Henderson band.

1934 – Debuts at the Apollo Theater with pianist Bobby Henderson on November 23rd. The two are romantically involved and reportedly briefly engaged, but the relationship ends as Billie’s star begins to rise.

1937-  Records and tours with Count Basie and his orchestra and reconnects with saxophonist Lester Young, who becomes a good friend and accompanist. Young dubs her “Lady Day” and in return she nicknames him “Prez”.The following year she tours with Artie Shaw and his orchestra, becoming one of the first black females to sing with a white group.

1959 – Billie Holiday is taken to the New York Metropolitan Hospital on May 31st with heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver. She is placed under arrest at the hospital on drug charges and dies there on July 7th.