Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter.

Nicknamed Lady Day1 by her sometime collaborator Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz, and pop singing. Her vocal style — strongly inspired by instrumentalists — pioneered a new way of manipulating wording and tempo, and also popularized a more personal and intimate approach to singing. Critic John Bush wrote that she "changed the art of American pop vocals forever."2 She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child," "Don't Explain," and "Lady Sings the Blues."