Lila Bear's Review of "Lady Sings the Blues"

Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday and William Dufty


Book Summary
Originally released by Doubleday in 1956, Harlem Moon Classics celebrates the publication with the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Billie Holiday’s unforgettable and timeless memoir. Updated with an insightful introduction and a revised discography, both written by celebrated music writer David Ritz.

Lady Sings the Blues is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon. We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.

Lila Bear's Review

As much as I love fiction, it often feels scripted. I know duh, right? In genre fiction especially, many even great books follow a template. As a reader, it can get frustrating to know where the author is going before she/he gets there. On the other hand, nonfiction can shock where fiction often doesn't. Real life rarely goes according to a template and even knowing the outcome doesn't ruin the ride.

Many biographies are so polished that they lose the voices of the people telling their stories. It makes sense to put their best faces forward and all that. With Lady Sings the Blues, you feel Billie's voice. Her anger, pain, humor, joy. Everything she feels is told in her voice. Nothing is polished.

When she returns to her old street and sees people who tormented her when she was a kid, there's none of that nostalgic bullshit. She views them as losers and she's returned as a star. Fuck them. She won while they lost. Raw and unflinching, you are experiencing the real Billie.

I admit it took me a few pages to get into the vibe of Billie's voice. She bounces around a lot as if telling her story to a friend, instead of sketching out a book from point A to point B. The reader already knows the ending. Billie became a star. How she got there and every bump on the road to stardom and afterwards is what makes her story special.

I'd recommend this book to people who don't normally read star biographies. It's a history lesson mixed with a fascinating self portrait of a strong vibrant ballsy woman.