This podcast is about Billie Holiday, one of the most popular singers of the jazz age. Lady Day was born born Eleanora Fagan in 1915. While surviving a difficult childhood she developed a unique vocal style, improvisational skills, and pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday won a recording contract in 1935 and immediately produced her first big hit. "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", became an instant jazz standard. Billie Holiday remained a very popular recording artist and concert performer through the 1940s and '50s. She died of cirrhosis in 1959, at the young age of 44. Holiday won four Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. You're going to hear Lady Day help teach a course in music history on New World A Coming in 1944. She performs on the popular Arthur Godfrey Show on CBS Radio in 1947 which also features the Mariners, one of the first popular integrated singing quartets. You'll also hear Billie Holiday interviewed on CBC Radio in 1951, and she performs live at Storyville in Boston on WMEX Radio in 1953.