Billie Holiday

:For the Canadian broadcaster known professionally as Billie Holiday, see Billie Holiday (broadcaster).

Early life

Born Eleanora Fagan, she had a difficult childhood which affected her life and career. Much of Holiday's childhood is clouded by conjecture and legend, some of it propagated by herself in her autobiography published in 1956. She was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Fells Point section of Baltimore. According to her autobiography, her house was the first on their street to have electricity. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, was just thirteen at the time of her birth; her father Clarence Holiday, a jazz guitarist who would play for Fletcher Henderson, was fifteen. Billie Holiday's parents married when she was three, but they soon divorced, leaving her to be raised largely by her mother and other relatives. A hardened and angry child, she dropped out of school at an early age and, allegedly, began working as a prostitute with her mother. This preceded her move to New York with her mother sometime in the early 1930s.

Related Topics:
1956 - Philadelphia - Fells Point - Baltimore - Clarence Holiday - Fletcher Henderson - Prostitute - New York

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There is controversy regarding Holiday's paternity. This stems from a copy of her birth certificate in Baltimore archives that lists the father as a "Frank DeViese". Some historians consider this an anomaly, probably inserted by a hospital or government worker (See Donald Clarke, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, ISBN 0306811367). Clarence Holiday accepted paternity, but was hardly a responsible father. In the rare times Billie did see him, she would shake him down for money by threatening to tell his then-girlfriend that Holiday was his daughter.

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