[Thomas]: What is up, everybody? :D This month is Women's History Month. (whoo)
Last month was Black History Month, and this video is about a black woman who you
definitely should know more about, but I won't be the one to tell you that story. So, without further ado, this is Historic Heroes.
[Dahlia]: On a Holiday!
Billie Holiday was the first black woman to do what?-- A) Sing at Carnegie Hall
B) Win a Grammy C) Sell 1 million copies of an album, or D) sing with an all-white Orchestra?
The answer is D) Sing with an all white orchestra.
Billie Holiday had been singing in nightclubs since she was 17 years old. When she was in her early 20s in 1938,
Billie was hired by Artie Shaw, and she toured as a full-time singer through the segregated south with an all white orchestra and band leader.
She obviously faced a lot of racism. [distant crowd booing]
There was one point where she wasn't allowed to sit on the bandstand with the rest of the orchestra.
[singing, 'Holiday'] When the orchestra played live on the radio, she wasn't allowed to sing. And, there was one incident in particular in Kentucky,
where a white heckler called her a racist slur.
American author Terry Teachout described Billie's response to him as...
[Joan as Terry Teachout]: "an obscenity of the highest possible voltage".
[Dahlia]" Yeah, her bandmates had to physically remove her from the stage as quickly as possible.
The leader of the orchestra was pressured into hiring a white lead singer
to placate audiences, and during a show in New York,
Holiday was not allowed to visit the kitchen or the bar.
She also wasn't allowed to use the main entrances in the hotel,
and she was forced to stay in a back room until her performances.
So, she ended up quitting. What a diva, you know, demanding basic human decency.
Billie continued performing live and recording albums on her own,
and she was extremely well known for her unique
sound, style, and vocal technique.
Speaking of technique...
Did Billie Holiday know how to read music?
Yes... [offscreen voice: No] ...No? What do you mean "no"? Have you heard her-? [offscreen voice: Yes]
Apparently, she learned everything by ear.
She never learned music theory or how to read music, but she was very good at improvisation.
She took inspiration from Bessie Smith and Louie Armstrong, and
emphasized singing with a focus on feeling as opposed to technique.
When recording with her band, they wouldn't write musical arrangements.
They would just go into the studios and improvise.
She frequently changed the melodies of a lot of classic jazz songs, which was polarizing for audiences, but about the subject
she said, "I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The Blues is sort of a mixed up thing.
You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing, is part of my life."
She liked to create songs that had an emotional
effect on people and that spoke candidly about events in her life, or in the current time.
One current event that had been greatly affecting black people during her time was a surge in lynchings.
What was the name of the song Billie Holiday used to spur on the anti-lynching movement in the United States?
A) Bitter Fruit, B) Strange Fruit, C) Odd fruit, or D) Fruit?
B) Strange Fruit. Strange Fruit was originally written as a protest poem by a Jewish school teacher named Abel Meeropol.
[Joan as Abel Meeropol]: Hey Anne, you wanna hear my poem?
Its lyrics speak very explicitly about the lynchings of black people. Billie first performed the song in
1939 in the first integrated night Club of New York called Café Society.
A club that branded itself [Camden as Barney Josephson]: "the wrong place for the right people". Due to how
controversial the song was the owner of the club, Barney Josephson, made a list of rules for the performance.
[Barney Josephson]: It's got to be the last song of your performance. All the waiters have got to stop serving food and drink before it starts and,
most importantly, the whole club's got to be dark, except for one spotlight on your gorgeous face.
She asked her record label, Columbia Records, if she could record the song, but they told her it was too inflammatory.
So she went to Commodore Records, a label known for making alternative jazz, and recorded it with them.
Even though it got recorded, it was still banned from being played on the radio.
It still ended up being the song
she was most well-known for, and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in
1978 and named song of the century by Time magazine in 1999.
While she was somewhat apprehensive about the song and the pushback that it may have caused,
she still chose to sing it, because she said the lyrics reminded her of her dad
who had died when he was denied treatment at a whites-only hospital when he was 39.
And it definitely did cause pushback. Many club-goers would walk out of her
performances and, after one show, she was followed to her dressing room and attacked by an audience member.
Some clubs tried to ban her from singing the song but, get this, she put it in her contract that she was
guaranteed the option to sing that song and whatever club she was hired at. When asked why she said,
"I only do it for people who might understand and appreciate it. This is not a June moon croon tune.
This song tells a story about pain and heartache." And people did appreciate it.
Many groups sent copies of the songs to members of the Senate in an attempt to get them to pass laws prohibiting lynching. However, and
sadly enough,
lynching was not recognized as a federal hate crime until last year,
with the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018, which was passed in December.
Billie... represents
this attitude of not giving up, and
knowing what you believe is right and fighting for it no matter how the outcome turns out, like, whether it's a negative response or not.
Especially, like, in today's climate,
there's a lot of debate about morality
going around, and I think it's really important for you to know who you are and what you believe in and stick to it...
stick to what you believe is right and
hold on to your own like sense of identity.
[Thomas]: Thank you all so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it.
I want to give a big shout-out to Dahlia for being our narrator, and a huge
thank you to Camden and Joan, our editors, who worked tireless hours to make this video happen.
If you enjoyed this video,
there are going to be more stories of historic heroes told in the future
by more awesome people on our second channel, Thomas Sanders and Friends,
so make sure you're subscribed to that channel if you're not already.
[Dahlia]: So if you'd like to watch any other videos,
you can click over here.
And if you'd like to subscribe, you can click down here. And if you're interested in becoming Featured Fander, click down here.
That's it. And until next time take it easy guys, gals, and non-binary pals.
[Thomas]: Peace out!
A little bit more affirmatively. Get me a gin. You, vote for me. You, do more senatorial things. Oh. What is this?
(♪ dramatic music ♪)
What be this?
I've got to stop *sighs* letting Camden just edit whatever the heck he wants. It's... It's not good. *laughs*