Lady Day's Diary: The Life of Billie Holiday 1937-1959

by Ken Vail

Month-by-month chromology of singer's life.

Genres: Music

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's so hard to to know how to rank this one. A chronology like this isn't exactly a read-straight-through narrative like Wishing on the Moon a more traditional biography. Like that one, however, it does highlight the challenges of recording the daily life of one of the most celebrated jazz singers. Billie's childhood is covered sketchily and backed up mostly with what official documents exist of her hard-scrabble upbringing, primarily in Baltimore. Her concerts and recording dates are nearly all listed, but even those are surprisingly sketchy. Photographs, news clippings, and letter excerpts help flesh out the terse text making it a little more readable, but mostly it just made me want to get to work on filling in the many obvious gaps in Lady's life story.