Billie Holiday: Jazz Singer

Billie Holiday: Jazz Singer by Meredith Coleman McGee is a full-length biography from birth through the 30-year musical career of the late Great Lady Day, who became the defining voice in jazz in Harlem, New York in 1933. By the end of that decade, Billie Holiday recorded the protest song Strange Fruit about a public lynching of two Black males in Marion, Indiana. The 1939 recording became her signature song thrusting her into the spotlight as a race woman. Her newfound fame caught the attention of one of the most powerful law enforcement agents in the nation. His vision and her passion on race clashed. His power to maintain the status quo overshadowed her passion to lift her race.