probably people who share my passion!It would have been great if I could have get the chance to meet all those fantastic artists - so, if anyone knows about a time machine tell me!!! :DBillie HolidayBorn Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915 †July 17, 1959. She was also known as Lady Day, nicknamed by her sometime collaborator Lester Young. Her professional pseudonym was taken from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and Clarence Holiday, her probable father. Thrown out of her parent's home in Baltimore, Billie's mother - Sadie Fagan - moved to Philadelphia where Billie was born. Her parents married when she was three, but they soon divorced, leaving her to be raised largely by her mother and relatives. At the age of 10 she reported that she had been raped. That claim - combined with her frequent truancy - resulted in her bein sent to the House of the Good Shepherd (a catholic reform school) in 1925. It was only through the assistance of a family friend that she was releases two years later. Scared by these experiences, Billie moved to New York City with her mother in 1928. In 1929 her mother discovered a neighbor in the act of raping her daughter - he was sentenced to only three months in jail. According to Billie's own account, she was recruited by a brothel, worked as a prostitute in 1930 and was eventually imprisoned for a short time for solicitation. It was in Harlem in the early 30s that she started singing for tips in various night clubs. According to legend, penniless and facing eviction, she sang Travelin' all alone in a local club and reduced the audience to tears. She later worked at various clubs for tips, ultimately landing at Pod's and Jerry's - a well known Harlem jazz club. Her early work history is hard to verify, though accounts say she was working at a club named Monette's in 1933 when she was discovered by talent scout John Hammond.He arranged for Billie to make her recording debut on a 1933 Benny Goodman date, and Goodman was also on hand in 1935, when she continued her recording career with a group led by pianist Teddy Wilson. Their first collaboration included What a little moonlight can do and Miss Brown to you, which helped to establish Billie as a major vocalist. She began recording under her own name a year later, producing a series of extraordinary performances with groups comprising the Swing Era's finest musicians. Among the musicians who accompanied her frequently was tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who had been a boarder at her mother's house in 1934 and with whom she had a special rapport. She did a three-month residency at Clarc Monroe's Uptown House in New York in 1937. In the late 30s, she also had brief stints as a big band vicalist with Count Basie (1937) and Artie Shaw (1938). The later association placed her among the first black women to work with a white orchestra - an arrangement that went against the temper of the times. Billie's personal life was as turbulent as the songs she sang. She stated that she began using hard drugs in the early 40s. She married trombonist Jimmy Monroe on August 25, 1941. While still married to Monroe, she took up with trunpeter Joe Guy, her drug dealer, as his common law wife. She finally divorced Monroe in 1947, and also split with Guy. In 1947 she was jailed on drug charges and served eight months at the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution for Women in West Virginia. Her New York City Cavaret Card was subsequently revoked, which kept her from working in clubs there for the remaining 12 years of her life, except when she played at the Ebony Club in 1948, where she opened under the permission of John Levy.By the 50s Billie's drug abuse, drinking and relations with abusive men led to deteriorating health. As evidenced by her later recordings, her voice coarsened and did not project the vibrance it once had. However, she had retained - and, perhaps, strengthened - the emotional impact of her delivery.On March 28, 1952, Billie married Louis McKay, a mafia enforcer. McKay, like most of the men in her life, was abusive, but he did try to get her off drugs. They were separated at the time of her death, but McKay had plans to start a chain of Billie Holiday vocal studios. Her late recordings on Verve constitute about a third of her commercial recorded legacy and are as well remembered as her earlier work for the Columbia, Commodore and Decca labels. In later years her voice became more fragile, but it never lost the edge that had always made it so distinctive. On November 10, 1956, she performed before a packed audience at Carnegie Hall, a major accomplishment for any artist, especially a black artist of the segregated period of American history. Her performance of "Fine And Mellow" on CBS's The Sound of Jazz program is memorable for her interplay with her long-time friend Lester Young; both were less than two years from death. Billie first toured Europe in 1954, as part of a Leonard Feather package that also included Buddy DeFranco and Red Norvo. When she returned, almost five years later, she made one of her last television appearances for Granada's "Chelsea at Nine," in London. Her final studio recordings were made for MGM in 1959, with lush backing from Ray Ellis and his Orchestra, who had also accompanied her on Columbia's Lady in Satin album the previous year. The MGM sessions were released posthumously on a self-titled album, later re-titled and re-released as Last Recordings. Her final public appearance, a benefit concert at the Phoenix Theater in New York's Greenwich Village, took place on May 25, 1959. According to the evening's masters of ceremony, jazz critic Leonard Feather and TV host Steve Allen, she was only able to make it through two songs, one of which was Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do. On May 31, 1959, she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. On July 12, she was placed under house arrest at the hospital for drug possession, despite evidence suggesting the drugs may have been planted on her. Billie remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from cirrhosis of the liver on July 17 1959 at the age of 44. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with only $0.70 in the bank and $750 - a tabloid fee - on her person. Billie Holiday is interred in Saint Raymond's Cemetery, The Bronx, New York.