What more can be said about Billie Holiday other than she was one of the best jazz singers in all of America until the late 1950s? Plenty. The elegant and brooding vocalist achieved unheard of amounts of fame in her lifetime (and even more after her untimely death) despite covering up a huge number of setbacks in her private life including being raped as a child, a stint as a prostitute, a lifetime full of drug abuse and even a couple of arrests. Holiday is best known for bringing the jazz music of the late ‘30s and onward out of the Tin Pan Alley style that so often oppressed jazz singers from personalizing their own songs. She took risks, and more often than not she was rewarded with enormous recognition for her uniquely standout style.

Born as Eleanora Fagan Gough, Holiday inherited her love for music from her famous father, jazz guitarist Clarence Holiday. Her father left her mother when she was a child, but his contribution to her genes was enough for the young musician to benefit from. Holiday's supposed breakthrough came in 1933 when a dancing audition at a speakeasy turned into a test of her singing ability. Benny Goodman sought out the young Holiday, and her commercial debut came with the song "Your Mother's Son-in-Law." Although Holiday's music in the late 1930s was little more than forgettable, she got connected with Count Basie's Orchestra and, with the partnership of Lester Young and Buck Clayton, the trio gained wide recognition. Holiday was ultimately fired from the band, but her solo career ignited with the controversial hit single "Strange Fruit."

"Strange Fruit" was Holiday's in with the jazz industry, and 1942's "God Bless the Child" was her second and most popular hit song of the singer's career. Holiday continued to bust out jazzy hits through the 1950s, and her last appearance was in 1957 on the CBS program The Sound of Jazz. Battles with heroin and heart disease preceded her death in 1959.