‘Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year’
By Paul Alexander
Knopf, 368 pages

In 1959, Billie Holiday was approaching her mid-40s at half her weight in her prime, 100 pounds; dying from cirrhosis of the liver from constant alcohol abuse; plagued by an intermittent heroin habit; abused financially and physically by male companions; beset by critics carping about her weakened voice; putting up with police who hounded her: How could it be said that her last year was a triumph?

Accomplished biographer Paul Alexander, author of books about Sylvia Plath and James Dean, is not only right about Holiday’s triumph, but poignantly perceptive about one of the greatest jazz singers. Mr. Alexander concentrates on an artist capable of sublime performances even in physical and mental extremity. It is not too much to say that Holiday lived to sing.

Although Holiday’s last year is the biographer’s focus, various events trigger flashbacks to her past — to her fraught childhood and early days of prostitution, to a series of men who exploited her and beat her, but also to the joys that comforted and conditioned her to deal with adversity. Through it all, she maintained a dignity and elegance signified by her nom de plume, Lady Day.

Frank Sinatra was attracted not only by Lady Day’s voice but her phrasing. He studied her bending of notes and gave her full credit for teaching and inspiring him. He showed up in the hospital during her dying days, expressing not only his gratitude but his fealty to her. So did many other artists.

Tallulah Bankhead, the flamboyant actress, befriended Holiday and had an affair with her. The daughter of William Bankhead, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1936 and 1940, called up J. Edgar Hoover to upbraid him for FBI harassment of Holiday, which actually was mild compared to the NYC police department, which assigned guards outside her hospital room even as she was dying.

One reason why Billie Holiday became a target of law enforcement, her biographer suggests, is because of a song about a lynching written for her, “Bitter Fruit.” It ends with a challenging question: “Why are the people so quiet in America?” Although not an active social protester, Holiday articulated the right to be heard and respected, and that riled many of those in power.

While Mr. Alexander deals with Holiday’s ailments and her troubles with the law, much of his biography is about her triumphant last appearances in night clubs, concert venues, and on television. She never lost the ability to enthrall an audience — even when, in one instance, Steve Allen had to hold her up and help her walk onto a stage.

Lady Day made few gestures while singing. She did not move, and that was essential, as one singer points out, to her phrasing of a song. Mr. Alexander’s descriptions of her performances are reminiscent of those by great actors like Ronald Colman, who could transfix an audience with a look in his eyes, the tilt of his head, and with underplaying that encouraged audiences like Holiday’s to project their feelings into her singing. 

A final section of Mr. Alexander’s book shows how obituaries exaggerated her drug addiction and said very little about her art, relegating her to the role of “Negro singer,” while films such as “Lady Sings the Blues,” purportedly based on her autobiography, have distorted and, in many cases, simply fabricated a version of Holiday that bears no connection to the truth.

Holiday’s redemption, Mr. Alexander shows, is exemplified in the work of her attorney, Florence Kennedy, later to become a radical feminist, who helped to reclaim what was owed to Holiday from the record companies that had cheated her out of royalties. The biographer honors the artists who worked with her who have created their own tributes and have enhanced her legacy.

It was never Holiday’s intention to stop performing. Only 44 when she died, she had made no will, and even in an oxygen tent she showed no sign of giving up, even if her body had had enough.

Mr. Rollyson is the author of “American Biography” and the forthcoming “Ronald Colman: Hollywood’s Gentleman.”