Object Details
- Exhibition Label
- Duke Ellington called Billie Holiday "the essence of cool," a reference to her equipoise in performance. The most influential jazz vocalist of all time, Holiday had a controlled emotional power that transformed even trite ballads into romantic short stories. Born Eleonora Harris and partially raised in a New York City brothel, she crafted a cool vocal style by tempering Bessie Smith’s shouting power with Louis Armstrong’s rhythmic nuance, then honed her craft on the road with the Count Basie Orchestra. Lester Young named her "Lady Day," and in their chamber jazz classics, such as "All of Me," voice and saxophone curl around each other into smoky swirls of late-night yearning. Late in life Holiday, a drug addict and survivor of abusive relationships, sang in a cracked, broken voice that remained true to the jazz practice of self-expression.
- Data Source
- National Portrait Gallery
- Artist
- Bob Willoughby, 30 Jun 1927 - 18 Dec 2009
- Sitter
- Billie Holiday, 7 Apr 1915 - 17 Jul 1959
- Date
- 1951 (printed Dec 16, 1991)
- Credit Line
- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bob Willoughby
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 25.4 × 35.5 cm (10 × 14")
- Sheet: 30.3 × 40.3 cm (11 15/16 × 15 7/8")
- Type
- Photograph
