Lady Sings the Blues

Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday with William Dufty

Lady Sings the Blues is a thrilling and fascinating biography about Billie Holiday's life. The book describes her childhood during the 20’s and 30’s. Despite poverty, discrimination and sexism she creates a name for herself as one of the top artists within the jazz industry. The book contains Billies humour, by reading the book you get a feel for what kind of person Billie was.

The book is arranged in a chronological order, but very loosely constructed and leaving many gaps in her story. It is based on Billie Holiday’s memories and anecdotes as told to the co-author, William Dufty. Her reminiscences focus mostly on the people she met during her lifetime, but through these stories the reader gets to know more about Holiday as a very sociable and extroverted person. The book focuses very little on the technical parts of her music and career.

The narrator of the book is Billie Holiday and it’s written as if she was sitting in front of you, telling you exactly how she experienced it. This style of writing is reflected into the text, a lot of the time Billie doesn’t expand on how certain characters behaved, what they did and how they acted to different things. She only remembers the most major characters in depth, the ones who went above and beyond to either support her career, or help her get through life. She also remembers a lot about the characters who did her harm, such as her Cousin, Ida, or the owner of the Grand Theatre in Boston. In particular, these two persons in particular went out of their way to punish and hold back Billie Holiday, therefore, it is only natural that she would remember more details about them than, for example her uncle who just happened to live in the same house as her.