Billie Holiday Essay examples

could not give her everything. She stayed home and took care of their five kids. One off

They had plans to have children and to move from California. Once she completed college the marriage went downhill. He decided he did not want to move or have children. She believed she started developing symptoms of schizophrenia because of unhappiness and disappointments. She later experience delusions of people plotting against her. The symptoms became more complicated and her husband committed to a psychiatric facility.

"If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question American. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook because of our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?" Fannie Lou Hammer before the Democratic National Convention, 1964. Fannie Lou Hamer is best known for her involvement in the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC). The SNCC was at the head of the American voter registration drives of the 1960's. Hamer was a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP), which ultimately succeeded in electing many blacks to national office in the state of Mississippi.

Throughout the African American civil rights movement opportunities were sought to spark a chance at improving conditions in the south. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery, Alabama bus was the fire to that spark. Rosa, standing up for herself something anyone person in today’s world would do, was arrested and put in jail. While Rosa was in jail she caught the eye of many people in the Civil Rights Movement, including the leaders. The Civil Rights leaders protested her arrest and hired lawyers to aid her in her trial. Although she was found guilty and was fined fourteen dollars for the cost of the court case, which lasted on thirty minutes, she wasn’t done yet. Rosa Parks has affected the society we live in today in

Throughout her life she collaborated on more than 250 albums, sold more than 40 million of those albums and won 13 Grammy awards. Her influence soon spread throughout the musical circuit and her singing style was much imitated in the 1950s and 1960s. Ella's trademark of "scat" singing (a technique in which the singer improvises as an instrument would and uses nonsense syllables) was taken up by many male and female jazz vocalists. Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday and the modern day

Educationally, Billie was deprived. Never getting beyond the fifth grade, Billie was the victim of the educational restrictions that were imposed on many of those who dwelt in Black Ghettos (BB 67). As Billie grew older her education became a limitation. "This woman's talent and her looks, and yet in some ways she really had the mind of a 12-year-old" (BB 67). This lack of education would haunt Billie later in her career, a startling reminder of her childhood, and its definite shortcomings

     She was pretty all right and graced the covers of thirty-three magazines in 1945. When her husband returned from war in 1946, he found that there was no room for him and his wife divorced him in Reno in June of 1946. That same year she began doing pin-up and cheesecake pictures for covers of magazines. She had a photo session with Andre de Dienes and he asked Norma Jeane to marry him, but she was recently divorced, free, and independent. Nevertheless, he got her on covers of major magazines. Shortly after this, in July 1946, she got a short contract with Twentieth Century-Fox. Then she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn for the musical star Marilyn Miller and Monroe from her mother’s maiden name.

Her stage career began in 1919 in the United States when she toured with The Jones Family Band and

     During 1936, Holiday toured with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson, then went back to New York for several more recording sessions. In later January of 1937, she recorded several songs with a small group from one of Hammond's newest discoveries, Count Basie's Orchestra. Tenor Lester Young, who'd known Billie from previous engagements, and trumpeter Buck Clayton were

After they married, in spite of her unentertained heart, they had two boys. Many of the other women around her made

It is said that this hard lifestyle began to affect her work. Her songs were no longer filled with youthful emotions, but a sort of bitter regret. Even with the change in her music still had a great impact on other artists of her time and later. (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)

Also how she abused drugs, and alcohol as well as smoked

Being a touring singing and performer can become a very rough and tiring job. Being on the road traveling for many months, playing different shows every night would make you really realize if singing is what you love to do. Ella was a singer for more than 60 years. Ella Fitzgerald goes down in history as one of the greatest female singers proven by the many awards and respect she received.

of there music. In 1942 She left the band and moved to New York City And preformed at

was born in 1926. Golda Myerson was now a young mother and she had to spend the