Kuehl's parents were Sol and Ida Lipnack and she had a sister, Myra Luftman. Holiday was promptly arrested and did time in Welfare Island (now known as Roosevelt); she lied about her age to make sure she did not end up in juvenile until she was the age of majority. Maria Bryant, a singer and friend of Holidays, calls Levy a dirty, rotten, stinking bastard., In 1945, Holiday moved on to Louis McKay, who would become her manager and then her second husband. Documentary showcasing American legend Billie Holiday, capturing her depths and complexity through the voices of those who knew her best. } formId: '772606' var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? 9.45pm, BBC Two Director James Erskine brings this detailed, fascinating documentary charting the tumultuous life of jazz singer Billie Holiday, based on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted. [3] In 1978 she was found dead on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk,[3][8][10] after attending a Count Basie concert. Holiday's beauty and misery made her into a tragic figure to everyone except Linda Lipnack Kuehl. Pulled out of school at 11, she worked in a brothel at age 12, and by age 14 she was in Harlem singing at the Hot Cha Club. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { Wells, African Americans were most often lynched because they were financially successful or not deferential enough. Shes a psychopath. While interviewer Kuehl can be heard gasping in shock when she hears this description, Hamilton elaborates that Holiday was impulse-driven, strong, talented but not a dependable individual. He noted that he thinks that Holidays inability to control her impulses made her psychopathic. } Yoshi Kato wrote inMetrowith a flowing tone, an articulate delivery and a formidable understanding of musical principles and history, Nalley is comfortable in many a vocal setting. She is the former owner of the San Francisco jazz club Jazz at Pearls and was awarded Most Influential African American in the Bay Area.. }; captainformThemeStyle['772605'] = ''; Many important details of her life and her musical genius have been overshadowed by a lurid interest in her love life and drug use. It seems amazing that most writers have speculated on the reason Billie Holiday left both the Basie Band and the Shaw Band without getting the testimony of Basie and Shaw themselves. captainformThemeStyle['772606'] = ''; By all accounts, he was abusive and a heavy drug user. A la fin des annes 1960, la journaliste Linda Lipnack Kuehl commence une biographie officielle de l'artiste. Consistently entertaining, Billie is really about the writer and subject of the . Did someone consider the pairs intimacy a threat? }, 10); [7][3][8] Her archive on Holiday included these interviews on 125 audio tapes[8] as well as "a long paper trail, including police files, transcripts of court cases, royalty statements, shopping lists, hospital records, private letters, muddled transcripts and fragments of unfinished chapters. In 1928, Holiday and her mother moved to New York Citys Harlem neighborhood. The documentary will thread her story through the eyes of one of her most enamored fans, Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who, in 1971, set out to write a definitive biography. function resize77260563c877fb82c45(wrapper){ Over 8 years, she tracked down and tape-recorded over 200 hours of interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. These incredible testimonies reveal Holiday's . window.addEventListener('resize', function(){ [2] Various other writers' biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material, as did the film Billie (2019), which is narrated by Kuehl's recorded interviews. append_element({ She had $750 to her name when she died, according to the documentary. Even though she performed a historic sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall after she was let out of prison in 1948 (at the time, Carnegie Hall was a venue for classical and opera music, not jazz), the damage to her reputation was done. var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63c877fb82c45'); On 6 February 1978, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl fell from the balcony of a Washington DC hotel. Enjoy our special Billie Holiday Gallery of photos, posters, record covers, surprises and film clips with lots of great music. Protest songs became more prevalent in the 1960s, but Holiday was a pioneer. Milt Hilton, a bass player who worked with Holiday during her last music recording sessions, remembers: She was in pretty bad shape. He took many of the widely published photos of her during these last sessions. He reportedly ripped her off. Linda Lipnack Kuehl spent eight years trying to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. Holiday, who died of heart failure and cirrhosis of the liver at age 44 in 1959, was an iconic jazz singer who was also one of the first African American entertainers to record music speaking out against racial injustice. In the 1970s, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl embarked on a deep dive into Billie Holiday's history with an eye towards writing a more comprehensive and truthful biography than that which was available. 2019 Directed by James Erskine Synopsis She sang the truth, she paid the price 'Lady Day' was one of the greatest jazz vocalists the world ever heard. Intending to write a biography of Billie Holiday, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's life, but died before its completion. Jimmy Fletcher, an African American who was a narcotics agent for the FBI at the time, says that Holidays agent Joe Glaser worked with the FBI to arrest her in a drug bust for her own good., According to Fletcher, He [Glaser] confided in me that he wanted to save her. }); Her death was ruled a suicide. Line: 24 Oral history is only as good as the interviewer and Kuehl, a very attractive white woman, put her interviewees at ease by interviewing them most often in bars where they worked and turning off the microphone when asked. var popupParams = { Like most documentaries on older famous Black jazz musicians, stock photography is used since there was no available footage, but better photography could have been used. jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 + wrapper.width() + wrapper.css('padding').replace('px', '') * 2); Several people in the documentary say that New York City doormen (especially on 52nd Street) would regularly supply her with drugs. Then, before she could finish her biography, Kuehl died: In 1978, her body was found on a Washington, D.C. street. var readyStateOverflowInterval; The film includes rare photos of Billie Holiday taken by Hugh Bell, licensed to the production by Gartenberg Media, the exclusive representative of . KUEHLLinda (Lipnack). if('' == 'floating') { }, true); Sign up for a chance to win prizes (such as free gift cards) and get priority alerts or invitations to the hottest lifestyle/culture news, discounts and promotions. [11] "Police deemed it suicide, Kuehl having supposedly jumped from her hotel room, although there was no proof of this",[3] and her family believes she may have been murdered. Function: view, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/controllers/Main.php captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams); Eleanoras parents got married when she was 3 years old, and she was raised primarily in Baltimore. The journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl worked for years on a Billie Holiday biography before Kuehl's sudden death in 1978. Kuehl died in what was deemed. The scene in Harlem was dense with famous clubs, famous musicians and a seemingly endless supply of white patrons eager to slum and see African American entertainment. function resize77260663c877fb834ac(wrapper){ }, 10); Racism is still an enduring feature of Black life in America, but it does pull the viewer out of Holidays time too much. Holiday co-wrote her 1956 memoir Lady Sings the Blues with William Dufty, and the book became the basis of the 1972 feature film of the same name, starring Diana Ross, who earned an Oscar nomination for her role as Holiday. [1], File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/views/user/popup_modal.php [1], Last edited on 23 September 2022, at 00:47, "Billie documentary review an oral history of Billie Holiday", "Singer, activist, sex machine, addict: the troubled brilliance of Billie Holiday", "Billie is a fanatical yet fascinating portrait of an immortal talent", "Billie a powerful documentary about the life of the singer", "Documentary Billie squanders its incendiary premise review", "Biography covers range of a vocalist (Published 2005)", "Billie review a double tragedy of destruction and obsession", "One Scats, the Other Doesn't (Published 1994)", "Observer review: With Billie by Julia Blackburn", "Billie review a truer, historical spin on the great Billie Holiday", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linda_Lipnack_Kuehl&oldid=1111802271, This page was last edited on 23 September 2022, at 00:47. Recently some articles based on faulty interviews emphasize her persecution in Hoovers war on drugs without realizing this was a fact of life for all African American jazz musicians. Over 8 years, she tracked down and tape-recorded over 200 hours of interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. And the only way to save her was to have her knocked out by the government. George H. White, who was a narcotics agent at the time, says Holidays lavish lifestyle also made her a target for the FBI and other law enforcement: Billie flaunted her way of living.. Jimmy Flashy Monroe [a pimp who became a trombonist in Holidays band] broke them up. Linda Lipnack Kuehl IMDbPro Starmeter See rank Help contribute to IMDb. Here, Erskine has been given the opportunity to illuminate the lives of two women by seeing where they intertwine. According to Luftman, her sister Kuehl was threatened by people close to Count Basie, who became close to Kuehl when she interviewed him for the book. Holidays time with Basie and his band ended on a sour note when she left. The documentary includes archival news video footage of Joan Allen, a correctional officer who worked at the federal rehabilitation facility in Alderston, West Virginia, where Holiday served her prison time. The director of this documentary bought her research, and uses it well. The tapes have never [] Read the full article: Glasgow Film Festival 2020: Billie Glasgow Film Festival 2020 Glasgow Film Festival 2020: Anderson Falls Then, in the late 1960s journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. By singing and recording the anti-lynching protest song Strange Fruit Holiday became a race woman and outspoken proponent of civil rights 15 years before Brown v. Board and almost 20 years before the March on Washington. [3] She worked as a high school teacher and free lance writer. } One is the subject Billie Holiday and the other, her biographer Linda Lipnack Kuehl. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Biography submission guide. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Because McKay was still legally married to Holiday when she died, he inherited Holidays estate and future earnings. She spoke to Holidays friends, and to those who had been there for the most transformative chapters of her life. It ' s constructed from the tapes made by of an arts journalist, Linda Lipnack Kuehl, in the 1970s. Holidays boxer dog was used as a way to transport drugs underneath the dogs collar. The first of the two films - "Billie" is a documentary built around some previously unheard audio interviews conducted by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who was working on a comprehensive biography on Billie Holiday before her untimely death in 1978.Ms. captainform_preload_form_popup(popupParams); There were reports that McKay was very controlling and unscrupulous when it came to Holidays finances. Particularly jarring is a small girl made up to look as if she was Billie as a child. She was a highly talented and unique star, but she also complicated and deeply troubled. var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63c877fb82c45'); Kuehl is remarkable for interviewing lesser known people who had a lot of contact with Lady Day. Add or change photo on IMDbPro Add to list More at IMDbPro Contact info Agent info Credits Edit IMDbPro Archive Footage Previous 1 Billie Self (archive footage) 2019 Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content Her highs, lows and everything in between are detailed in the film, but theres still a sense of mystery about Holiday that remains to this day. Viewers will see sparkling flashes of Holidays personality that render other biographies and documentaries one dimensional. View eatdrinkfilmsmags profile on Instagram, View eatdrinkfilmssos profile on Pinterest, BILLIE documentary is Actually Linda Kuehl on Billie. Kuehl was an experienced arts journalist who wrote for The Paris Review and The New York Times Sunday magazine. I sometimes see the hardships of being a Black man highlighted but I do not see the same courtesy given to Miss Holiday. Culture Clash:Holiday battled drug addiction, and several people who knew her say that she was a target of the FBI. She also got a lot of abuse and harassment from racists they encountered. popupTrigger.css('visibility', 'visible'); }); clearInterval(captainForm772605PreloadInterval63c877fb83722); var readyStateOverflowInterval; Get a load of the critics, the people who judge our music. setTimeout(function () { Watching the footage of her face singing with no sound could reduce the watcher to tears alone without hearing a single note. Being a solo act gave Holiday the freedom to record whats considered the most important and most controversial song of her career: Strange Fruit. Written by Abel Meeropol under the alias Lewis Allan, and released in 1939, the song is a poetically brutal commentary on racial injustice, particularly in describing the lynching of black people in the South. She wasnt like a slut. [3], Interviews that Kuehl conducted with writers were published in The Paris Review in 1972 and 1978. Linda Lipnack Kuehl (January 24, 1940 - February 6, 1978) was an American arts journalist, based in New York City. } captainformCustomVars['772605'] = ''; [7][3][8] Her archive on Holiday included these interviews on 125 audio tapes[8] as well as "a long paper trail, including police files, transcripts of court cases, royalty statements, shopping lists, hospital records, private letters, muddled transcripts and fragments of unfinished chapters. The girl looks absolutely nothing like Holiday. Holiday grew up in Baltimore, poor and lonely her father had abandoned her and her mother was often absent due to work. Nalley combines music and history in her award-winningTributes to Ella Fitzgerald,Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Black Broadway. Her playElla: the American Dreampremiered in 2008 and can be viewed onEat My Shorts. At one point, she began to receive strange, threatening calls. They loved it. Several people in the documentary describe Holiday as a masochist who never knew what it was like to have a healthy love relationship when she was adult. In Holidays case we could also add being female to that equation as well. }, 50); She interviewed and interviewed. The director James Erskine does a great job inserting commentary during relevant moments. function resize77260663c877fb829bf(wrapper){ Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies, Wondrous sounds: Billie Holiday in the early 1950s. }; It is similar to how the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is as much about Mark Bittner as the parrots. The biopic will follow Holiday's life through the eyes of Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who as a fan and literary journalist in 1970 began a biography of Holiday. if (document.getElementById('captainform_js_global_vars') == null) { var captainformDomReady = captainformDomReady || function(e){var t=!1,n=function(){document.addEventListener? }, true); var captainformCustomVars = {}; Strange Fruit was banned from radio airplay in certain areas, and many venues forbid Holiday from performing the song. if(typeof cfJsHost != 'undefined'){ When asked if the stories were true that Holiday had to darken her skin when performing with Basie and his band, because she was so much lighter-skinned then they were, Basie also claims ignorance about that issue. She was a perfectionist, according to her sister, which is why it took so long for Kuehl to work on the uncompleted book. In 1971, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. Intending to write a biography of Billie Holiday, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's life, but died before its completion. Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 17, 1915, in Philadelphia, but she was raised in the Pigtown slum of Baltimore, Maryland. Billie certainly encompassed both requirements. She had also recorded her most important song, Strange Fruit a battle cry against Americas vicious history of lynching, sat right at the dawn of the civil rights movement. jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 - wrapper.outerHeight()); Kim Nalley is on faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory and is writing her Doctoral dissertation on the Globalization of Jazz and Black Cultural Politics.. [11][14][15] Documentary director James Erskine bought the rights to Kuehl's tapes[3] and his subsequent film, Billie (2019), is "a journey through Holiday's life, narrated by the voices on those tapes",[3][14][16][17] including Kuehl's. Kuehl was and still is, posthumously, THE preeminent biographer of Billie Holiday, despite never having completed Holiday's biography before she died in 1978. But the interviews are by numerous people who knew her best who wouldnt be able to be interviewed today, because almost everyone is now deceased. Be the first to contribute! var popupTrigger = jQuery("#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63c877fb83722"); Holidays career spanned 30 years. elementType: "script", A snippet plays in the new documentary Billie, a . else if ('' == 'right') Kuehl's extensive interviews of Holiday's contemporaries have been the backbone of many Holiday biographies. id: "captainform_js_global_vars", Kuehl was white, born in the Bronx and relatively prosperous. A more pertinent flaw would be the ending montage which shows images of current racism against African Americans over Drummer Papa Jo Jones voice. Shortly after she became a professional singer as a teenager, Holiday began working with musician/producer John Hammond, who introduced her to Benny Goodman in 1933. jQuery(wrapper).find('a').removeAttr('href'); She was discovered by Michael Tilson Thomas while singing to packed audiences live with no amplification at San Franciscos Alta Plaza. Kuehls only objective was to understand Holiday better, which she does better than any other biographer of Billie Holiday. Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer's short, tumultuous life. It was a different kind of poor We were happy with what we had. Mary Pony Kane, a childhood friend of Holidays, remembers that Eleanor was foul-mouthed, even as a child. Her archive passed to a private collector and was later used in other writers' biographies of Holiday. } Function: _error_handler, File: /home/ah0ejbmyowku/public_html/application/views/page/index.php Holidays light brown skin contrasts dramaticallywith her dark dresses, and smooth-straightened glossy dark hair and the white gardenias (or lily or orchid.) For some eight years in the 1970s, Kuehl interviewed everyone she could find who had a personal association with Holiday musicians, managers, childhood friends, lovers and FBI agents among. [2] Various other writers' biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material, as did the film Billie (2019), which is narrated by Kuehl's recorded interviews. captainform_preload_form_popup(popupParams); There are great archival photos of East Baltimore and of the reform school and the jail she was sent to. Jazz singer Billie Holidays rich, sensuous voice had been steeped in a lifetime of pain. jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 - wrapper.outerHeight()); captainForm772606PreloadInterval63c877fb829bf = setInterval(function(){ Unearthing a trove of audio recordings from the journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who planned to write a biography of Billie Holiday before committing suicide, James Erskine's approachable documentary Billie dives into the life of Holiday through Kuehl's myriad interviews with the people in the artist's orbit.
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