Billie Holiday Billie Holiday was born April 7th, 1915, in Baltimore. Her original name was Eleanora Fagan. Although her father, Clarence Holiday, was a guitar/banjo player in Fletcher Henderson’s band, she didn’t break into the music world until her late teens. After being signed by Columbia Records’ John Hammond in 1933 for her debut record. Holiday went on to work with Teddy Wilson, Buck Clayton and Lester Young, who gave her the nickname “Lady …showed first 75 words of 614 total…

…showed last 75 words of 614 total…she toured in Great Britain in 1954. She was even reunited with Lester Young in 1957 on a jazz television show. But all of these efforts made no difference, of anything prolonged the effects of her drug and alcohol abuse. She came to her untimely death in 1959 at the age of 44 while under arrest for heroin possession and while being treated in a New York hospital for kidney disease due to years of drug addiction and abuse.