It's "Lady Day's" day. Billie Holiday - born April 7, 1915.

Clicking this image of Billie admiring the sweet sound of Lester "Prez" Young's sax connects to the classic performance of "Fine and Mellow" from the 1957 TV special, The Sound of Jazz. The line-up included several jazz legends (the first six are listed in the order of their solos): Billie Holiday singing with Ben Webster - tenor saxophone, Lester Young - tenor saxophone, Vic Dickenson - trombone, Gerry Mulligan - baritone saxophone, Coleman Hawkins - tenor saxophone, Roy Eldridge - trumpet, Doc Cheatham - trumpet, Danny Barker - guitar, Milt Hinton - double bass, Mal Waldron - piano, and Osie Johnson - drums. Music and lyrics by Billie Holiday.

This 'clickable' Billie image connects to "I Can’t Get Started" with her musical love, Lester "Prez" Young on tenor, and Austinite Teddy Wilson, piano. In my opinion this is one of the best groupings in all of jazz! (Lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music: Vernon Duke.)

Her voice had a fragile, worldly quality with each note tinged with blues shadings. It was so compelling it influenced the jazz and pop singers who came after her. Frank Sinatra said of her,

"With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years."

"Any Old Time" - This is my all-time favorite Billie Holiday song. (It is not easy picking just one song from her repertoire - and this isn't even one with Lester Young or Count Basie!) But it is with Artie Shaw's band.

When Shaw hired her immediately after she left the Basie band, it was highly unusual at the time because it was an all-white orchestra. This was the first time a black female singer toured the segregated South with a white composer. Shaw defended her as they toured, but it was too much for her. When she was made to use the service elevator at one of their hotels because of guest complaints, she left the group for good.

Click Billie with "Mister" to hear "All of Me." (The Teddy Wilson band with Teddy on piano.)

This Billie "clickable" opens to her recording of "Easy Living."

Clicking this pic connects to Billie singing her biggest hit,"God Bless the Child" (1941, written by Billie and her then pianist Arthur Herzog). It became her most covered number, selling over a million records.  In 1976, the song was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame. Billie got the title for the song when she was having an argument with her mother over money. Before she left the scene, she shouted angrily, "God bless the child that's got his own."

Click Billie's image to hear her sing the protest song, "Strange Fruit."

"Strange Fruit" is a song-poem" by teacher Abel Meeropolis and his singer-wife Laura Duncan. Published in 1937,  they performed it as an anti-lynching protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. Billie Holiday first sang and recorded it in 1939.

Lynchings reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but continued there and in other regions of the United States. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 1,953 Americans were lynched, about three quarters of them black. The lyrics are a metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims.

Barney Josephson, founder of Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded of her of her father, who was denied medical treatment for a fatal lung disorder because of racial prejudice, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances.

Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules:

• Holiday would close with it,
• the waiters would stop all service in advance,
• the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Billie's face,
• there would be no encore.

During the musical introduction, Billie stood with her eyes shut, as if in prayer.

On July 17, 1959, she died in Metropolitan Hospital, New York, of pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver. As she lay dying, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who had been targeting her since at least 1939, arrested for drug possession and handcuffed her to her bed. Her hospital room was raided and she was placed under police guard.

In 1978, Holiday's version of "Strange Fruit" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.