A baby photo. Taped interviews with childhood friends. Handwritten set lists on crumpled paper. With a newly acquired collection of Billie Holiday biographical materials, Johns Hopkins University ...

LIFE HERE IN BALTIMORE. THE ONLY THING I KNEW ABOUT BILLIE WAS WHEN SHE FIRST STARTED SINGING. WE’RE ON THOSE LITTLE NIGHTCLUBS. RENITA WIGGINS, JACKSON AND AFRICANA ARCHIVES CURATORIAL FELLOW AT ...

On July 17, 1958, exactly one year before she died, Billie Holiday performed on the television show “Art Ford’s Jazz Party.” Ford, like most jazz lovers, was a Holiday devotee, and he almost sounds ...

An appreciation of one of the most innovative singers in music history. By Kate LoPresti, Frannie Carr Toth, Rowan Niemisto and Elena Bergeron “God Bless the Child.” “I’ll Be Seeing You.” And of ...

TALK TO THE ARTISTS BEHIND IT. AT FIRST GLANCE, SOUTH DURHAM STREET LOOKS LIKE YOUR TYPICAL BALTIMORE STREET. BUT WHEN YOU LOOK TO YOUR LEFT AND TO YOUR RIGHT, THERE’S ART HONORING BILLIE HOLIDAY.

In 1959, during what would be the final months of her life, Billie Holiday was unwell. The singer—who had honed her art in the brothels of Baltimore, fronted orchestras led by Count Basie and Artie ...

In this fine, clear-eyed biography, Paul Alexander documents Holiday’s propensity for feeding the media inaccuracies and tall tales, her enthusiastic embrace of “the adage that said the truth should ...