Wishing on the Moon: The Life and TImes of Billie Holiday

 

Shirley J.     Biography of Billie Holiday                     A deeply researched biography of Lady Day

Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday by Donald Clarke     480 pages

EXCELLENT BOOK!  One of the best biographies I have read.   Clarke's research gained him access to a vast amount of interviews previously unavailable to the public.  Friends, family, fellow celebrities, co-workers- musicians, singers, managers, club owners all filling in who Eleanora Fagan, later christened Billie Holiday, but known by her closest circle as Lady Day or "Lady" for short, a name bestowed on her by her friend, Lester Young and which she preferred to be known by the rest of her life.   Lady was a jazz singer,  a big band singer and a pop singer not so much as a blues singer though it was often said she sang the blues because during her early days in show business black women and men were often expected to sing the blues and were often hired and billed so.   Lady Day was so much more.   Her life as told here is so much more rounded than many of the writings about her would have readers believe.   While she did have her times with drugs that wasn't all her life was about.   She was tough and wouldn't take guff off of anybody either on her own behalf or on behalf of people she cared about.   She would throw down and fight men as well as women and for the most part came out the winner but she also loved children and her dogs and cooking.   She was your best friend ever is she liked you and those who really knew her adored her.   She was unlucky at love always picking the same type of guy who would treat her bad, steal her money, use her, beat her up then cast her aside.   Her esteem may have been a little skewed as sometimes it took getting a beating from her current lover to best her and get her in line.  Maybe this was because she and her mother had a volatile relationship though after her mother passed she bore guilt over what she thought she could have done to make her mother's life better though no one was ever certain if the two even liked one another.   She led a life of constant contradictions and though she made no bones about the fact she loved shooting heroin, she would get bent out of shape is she thought one of the younger people in her entourage were getting loaded, but, then there were stories of her having given shots of heroin to her dog who hid and wouldn't have anything to do with her when she got out of prison though she told a story of how he was happy to see her.    Good nostalgic trip through Lady Day's life as well as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, and others letting the reader in to the inner sanctum of the life of musicians during a majestic time in musical history.   I recommend this book to adults on up due to explicit drug use described, language - Lady's greeting for most everyone was M.F.   A beautifully in-depth look at a special lady taken away by an awful addiction but who managed an amazing life none-the-less.