Intending to write a biography of Billie Holiday, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's life, but died before its completion. Show more 3 months left to watch 1 hour, 30 minutes Last on. Pulled out of school at 11, she worked in a brothel at age 12, and by age 14 she was in Harlem singing at the Hot Cha Club. A 1947 shootout with cops in Philadelphia led to Holidays first arrest for narcotics possession. Function: _error_handler, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/views/user/popup_harry_book.php And it seems that Holiday didnt want to settle down with anyone who was considered nice or normal., Irene Kitchen, one of Holidays friends, mentions musician Sonny White, who was briefly Holidays fianc, as nice, quiet, a very good musician Her mother and I hoped that she would marry him. [3] In 1978 she was found dead on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk,[3][8][10] after attending a Count Basie concert. The conditions for African Americans were much more dismal than many people realize and Holidays struggles stand on their own. Billie Holiday, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins in The Sound of Jazz.. Holiday corrects an interviewer saying that she was fourteen when she arrived in New York. Cafe Society owner Barney Josephson says that it wasnt unusual for white customers to walk out of the club and complain if Holiday performed the song. window.addEventListener('resize', function(){ append_element({ Linda Lipnack Kuehl (24. tammikuuta 1940 - 6. helmikuuta 1978) oli yhdysvaltalainen taidetoimittaja New Yorkissa. var readyStateOverflowInterval; Billie certainly encompassed both requirements. captainformDomReady(function() { Over eight years, she tracked . In 1971, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. (Its hard to believe he didnt know.) Kuehl is remarkable for interviewing lesser known people who had a lot of contact with Lady Day. Nalley previously wrote for EatDrinkFilms about Ella Fitzgerald which was accompanied by an extensive gallery of images and videos of both singers. [2] captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); Considering the documentary is made almost exclusively of one persons previously unheard interviews, I cannot agree. [11] "Police deemed it suicide, Kuehl having supposedly jumped from her hotel room, although there was no proof of this",[3] and her family believes she may have been murdered. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Linda Lipnack Kuehl was writing a biography of Holiday when she died suddenly in 1978, though her family believe she may have been murdered, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. On 6 February 1978, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl fell from the balcony of a Washington DC hotel. }; Contact Us jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 + wrapper.width() + wrapper.css('padding').replace('px', '') * 2); append_element({ Linda delivers due diligence and interviews all the people involved to come up with an answer, or answers, that are closer to the truth than any other biographer. Eleven years after Billie Holiday died at the age of 44, from heart failure due to drug and alcohol abuse, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, a Lady Day devotee, interviewed as many people as. Required fields are marked *. At the time of her death, she and McKay were separated and not divorced. append_element({ 05 January 2023. Kuehl had. Yoshi Kato wrote inMetrowith a flowing tone, an articulate delivery and a formidable understanding of musical principles and history, Nalley is comfortable in many a vocal setting. She is the former owner of the San Francisco jazz club Jazz at Pearls and was awarded Most Influential African American in the Bay Area.. if ('' == 'left') Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. resize77260663c877fb829bf(wrapper); The documentary is also organized around approximately 200 hours of interviews conducted over the course of a decade by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who, as the film notes, didn't like seeing Holiday . They had an instantaneous and passionate romance, married, and in 1963, Linda gave birth to their first child, Heather Louise. Various biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material. Oddly enough, the just-released documentary Billie is an intertwining tragic tale of two women. (The documentary has lots of images of cassette recorders and reel-to-reel tap machines in operation, to give a visual representation of these interviews.) captainForm772606PreloadInterval63c877fb834ac = setInterval(function(){ type: "text/javascript", This unusual, ambitious doc doubles down on the challenge, adding an extra frame to the portrait: the obsession that drove journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl to toil for years on an epic biography of . jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 + wrapper.width() + wrapper.css('padding').replace('px', '') * 2); In the late 1960's, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. resize77260663c877fb834ac(wrapper); Considering all the trauma that Holiday had when she was a child (she was also raped more than once when she was a teenager), its no surprise that she ended up way that she did. Lipstick and brow pencil are the hallmark features. }); setTimeout(function () { The film includes rare photos of Billie Holiday taken by Hugh Bell, licensed to the production by Gartenberg Media, the exclusive representative of . textContent: 'var frmRef=""; try { frmRef=window.top.location.href; } catch(err) {}; var captainform_servicedomain="app.captainform.com";var cfJsHost = "https://";', Her career of 30 years has no breaks, stops or retreats into obscurity. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { Eleanors favorite curse words were motherfucker and cocksucker., By all accounts, Eleanor started working as a housecleaner/maid before she was a teenager. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. In his estimation, Holiday was a psychopath strictly in the sense that she was ruled by impulse. }; The film highlights a review that scathingly derides Billie for being heavy reminding us that draconian female standards of beauty have been around for a long time. That archive is where director James Erskine first began pulling . Kuehl died by suicide in 1978, though her sister appears in the documentary and asserts that she believes her sister was murdered. 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Along with Count Basie, we were the Royal Family, Holiday said in an archival interview. Some of the best moments of the documentary are hearing Billie talk about herself in her slight drawl infused with vocal fry. Holiday was promptly arrested and did time in Welfare Island (now known as Roosevelt); she lied about her age to make sure she did not end up in juvenile until she was the age of majority. if('' == 'floating') { type: "text/javascript", It also brings up a few necessary, if rarely confronted questions. The song she chose exposed discrimination, [by] putting it on stage., Jazz/swing singer Billy Eckstine says that one of the biggest racial inequality problems that black artists had to deal with was that their music was being controlled and judged by white people. captainformThemeStyle['772605'] = ''; resize77260663c877fb829bf(wrapper); else if ('' == 'right') She was a woman of breath-taking talent and global popularity while also stirring controversy. Recently some articles based on faulty interviews emphasize her persecution in Hoovers war on drugs without realizing this was a fact of life for all African American jazz musicians. There was a rebellious engine inside both of them. Over 8 years, she tracked down and tape-recorded over 200 hours of interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. "[9] However, Kuehl did not complete the book. textContent: 'var frmRef=""; try { frmRef=window.top.location.href; } catch(err) {}; var captainform_servicedomain="app.captainform.com";var cfJsHost = "https://";', Her parents split up not long after getting married, and Halliday became an absentee father who remained out of his daughters life. The film consists almost entirely of Kuehls recordings she had 125 cassettes worth of interviews and snippets of her writing, the latter played out over dramatic reconstructions of hands hovering above a typewriter. The journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl worked for years on a Billie Holiday biography before Kuehl's sudden death in 1978. Then in the late 1960's journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. Linda Lipnack Kuehl (January 24, 1940 February 6, 1978)[1] was an American arts journalist, based in New York City. They got married in 1957. textContent: 'var frmRef=""; try { frmRef=window.top.location.href; } catch(err) {}; var captainform_servicedomain="app.captainform.com";var cfJsHost = "https://";', [2] Various other writers' biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material, as did the film Billie (2019), which is narrated by Kuehl's recorded interviews. At the time, she had her own girls on the street. captainformDomReady(function() { }, true); var captainformCustomVars = {}; Beloved daughter of Sol and Ida Llpnack and loving sister of Myra Luttman died February 6th, 1978. In the documentary interview, Hammond says, There was a real problem between Billie and Basie. Meanwhile, Basie doesnt offer much insight about Holiday in his interview commentary, because he claims he didnt really know what was going on when she was in his band. I think she felt the pain of someones struggles. Kuehl's parents were Sol and Ida Lipnack and she had a sister, Myra Luftman. She also began hanging out at a brothel, which is where she first heard jazz music. resize77260563c877fb83722(wrapper); Being a solo act gave Holiday the freedom to record whats considered the most important and most controversial song of her career: Strange Fruit. Written by Abel Meeropol under the alias Lewis Allan, and released in 1939, the song is a poetically brutal commentary on racial injustice, particularly in describing the lynching of black people in the South. Elle fut la premire icne de la protestation contre le racisme ce qui lui a valu de puissants ennemis. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites Courtesy of the Kuehl family. if('' == 'floating') { Then, in 1971, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. }); Holidays career spanned 30 years. clearInterval(captainForm772606PreloadInterval63c877fb834ac); But the interviews are by numerous people who knew her best who wouldnt be able to be interviewed today, because almost everyone is now deceased. Memry Midgett, an Oakland pianist who played with Holiday in the 1950s and remained close with her, said Holiday confided that she was worried about the sins of her youth and Gods forgiveness. captainformThemeStyle['772606'] = ''; Linda Lipnack Kuehl was an American high-school teacher and arts journalist, based in Washington. id: "captainform_js_global_vars", UNSUNG HEROES THROUGH THE NIGHT- Special Free Screening Thursday, Jan. 19, NEW YEARS CHEER- A Nostalgic Look at Past New Years Through Images, Movies and Music, They Were Calling It the Twentieth Century, THE ART OF EATING: THE LIFE OF M.F.K. } As for Holidays love life, several people in the documentary say that Holiday was openly bisexual. (document.removeEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",d),window.removeEventListener("load",d)):(document.detachEvent("onreadystatechange",d),window.detachEvent("onload",d))},d=function(){t||!document.addEventListener&&"load"!==event.type&&"complete"!==document.readyState||(t=!0,n(),e())};if("complete"===document.readyState)e();else if(document.addEventListener)document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",d),window.addEventListener("load",d);else{document.attachEvent("onreadystatechange",d),window.attachEvent("onload",d);var o=!1;try{o=null==window.frameElement&&document.documentElement}catch(a){}o&&o.doScroll&&!function c(){if(!t){try{o.doScroll("left")}catch(d){return setTimeout(c,50)}t=!0,n(),e()}}()}}; window.addEventListener('resize', function(){ One of Holidays most poignant recordings, Lady in Satin, is a lush string album and her last album is made multidimensional by the testimonies of the musicians who played with her and friends she was close with. 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