Latest / DISGRACELAND / Billie Holiday: Heroin Hounds, ‘Whorehouse Music,’ and the Queen of Jazz

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Billie Holiday: Heroin Hounds, ‘Whorehouse Music,’ and the Queen of Jazz · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Billy Holliday
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: are insane. She was institutionalized for being raped. She ran
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: errands for call girls at just six years old, and
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: was later imprisoned for refusing to prostitute herself. She had
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a heroine hound that inconspicuously delivered packets of dope to
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: her front door. Her double crossing manager helped the FEDS
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: buster for narcotics anyway. She was a master of her
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: own sensuality, despite the trauma inflicted upon her as a
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: young girl. Billy Holiday grew up fast, but her voice
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: was slow sweet. She sang jazz in a way that
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: hung in the air that mesmerized millions of people. She
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: could bring a room to a hush or a roar
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: with a single syllable because Billie Holiday made great music.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Unlike that music I played for you at the top
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: loop from my melotron called Shortcake Strut MK one. I
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: played you that loop because I can't afford the rights
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: to Manyana is soon enough for Me by Peggy Lee
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: sultry cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: number one song in America on March twenty seventh, nineteen
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: forty eight, And that was the day Billie Holiday performed
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to a sold out Carnegie Hall, proving that no prison sentence,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: no betrayal, and no drug habit could keep her down.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: On this episode call Girls heroin House Betrayal, bringing down
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the house at Carnegie Hall in Billie Holiday, Jake Brennan
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and this is disgrace Land. Ten days out of prison.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Nothing tasted as sweet and strange as this freedom on
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: stage again lost in song, literal blood, sweat and tears.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Blood from the hat pin she used to fasten her
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: trademark Ardenias to her hair, sweat from giving her all
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: on stage, and tears of joy. Ten months in prison
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and there was no telling whether she'd have a career
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: at all afterward, never mind her rabbit and supportive audience,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: just days removed from the shame of incarceration. The Carnegie
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Hall concert wasn't her idea, It was the promoter's. He
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: must have known what he was talking about. Promoting was
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: his business. Singing and doing time was Billy Holliday's business.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Tickets moved like Harlem numbers runners quick. Billy Holiday's triumphant
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: return was barely announced before it sold out. Thirty five
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: hundred capacity seats sold, including standing room only tickets which
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: extended to the actual stage. Come showtime, two thousand people
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: jammed Seventh Avenue and fifty seventh Street in hopes of
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: finding their way in to see the woman they called
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Lady Day. Billy hadn't sung a stitch in prison, not
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: a known but you wouldn't know it from listening to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: her on stage at Carnegie Hall that night. She was
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: in possession of all her powers, commanding, sensual, sultry, the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: most unique and experienced voice in the business. You listened
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to Billie Holiday, and you knew the woman who owned
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that voice had seen some things. It was sultry and sensual, yes,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and it was also experienced. Billy Holliday would rather have
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: done without some of that experience. It was what led
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: her to this point tonight. She tried blocking it out.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: She dug into the field. She sang one of the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: first songs she wrote, God Blessed the Child. The title
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: was only half of it. The whole phrase, God blessed
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the child that's got his own hinted at the full story,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and the full story started with this. As a child,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Billy Holliday didn't have much of her own anything, save
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: for her mother's love. Her father, a working musician, split early.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: He left Billy for a life playing the banjo, but
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: he also left behind a shared love of music. Billy
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: had a fend for herself most days while her mother
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: worked as a maid cleaning rich people's homes. In Baltimore's
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Way neighborhoods, there was a man, a neighborhood man forty
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and big, mister Dick. Billy was ten years old. Physically,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: she had started developing early before most of the other
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: young girls in her neighborhood. Mister Dick noticed. He told
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Billy her mom had asked him and his wife to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: watch Billy until her mom returned later that night, and
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that Billy was supposed to go with the couple to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: their home down the street. Billy Holiday was ten years
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: old and innocent. She believed the two adults who then
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: brought Billy into their home, locked her in their bedroom,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: held her down, and proceeded to rape her. She screamed,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: she scratched. She saw her mother and a policeman break
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: down mister Dick's door. That mister Dick was arrested. Billy
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: and her mom gave their statements at the station, and
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: incredibly young Billy Holiday, at age ten, a rape victim,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: was thrown in jail. The cops didn't believe her. Look
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: at her, She must have enticed mister Dick. It couldn't
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: have been all his fault. Look at this girl, developed
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: beyond her years. Surely she deserved some of the blame
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: as well. So went the incredibly ignorant and insensitive thinking
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: from authorities at the time. Billy spent two nights in jail,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: then court, Mister Dick got five years in something approaching justice.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Billy Holiday, on the other hand, got sent to Catholic
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: girl's reform school. She needed to be sorted out, taught
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: a lesson, broken of whatever wild spirit brought on this
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: terrible incident, for it couldn't happen again. It was Billy
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Holliday's first taste of institutional injustice, and it was horrifying.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: The reform school was its own type of prison. The
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: treatment of the young girls was barbaric. They were beaten, isolated,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: mentally abused, and inside the walls of the school, physical
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: abuse wasn't beyond the realm of possibility if Billy wasn't careful.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: In short, it was dangerous, danger around every corner, even
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: in the most seemingly innocent of places. On the playground,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Billy sat on a bench, kicking her shoes, watching one
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: of the other girls on a swing. The girl kept
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: pushing it, pumping her legs and propelling herself higher and
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: higher and higher, until she swung so high she was dead,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: even on a line with the crossbar that the swing's
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: chain swung from. She pumped some more, higher, more higher still,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: until the swing's chains broke from the crossbar and the
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: girl and the swing flew through the air. The girl
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: screamed in horror as Billy watched the girl fly high
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: over the school yard and what seemed like slow motion,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: then over the yard's fence. The girl screamed the whole way.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: She flew out of the yard into the yard next door,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and crashed down violently. The scream went dead, so too
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: did the girl. Her neck broken. She died instantly. Billy
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: saw most of it, heard at all something in her
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that day died a little too. It was traumatic, upsetting,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: to say the least. She melted out to the mother Superior,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and for her punishment, they threw Billy in here, locked
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: in the front room of the reform school, with the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: body of the dead girl. It would be a day
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: or so before the morgue could make it out to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: collect the body, and for tonight, anyway, ten year old
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Billy Holiday would be keeping the body company. Dead girls
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: don't make much noise, But every little sound within and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: in earshot of that room, every spin of the overhead fan,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: every creek in every floorboard of the house, every foundational shift,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: every scurry from every road inside the old homes walls,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: the scattering cockroaches, every distant voice, every scuffle outside on
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the sidewalk, every random car horn. All of it conspired
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: to come together in a symphony of horror. That soundtracked
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the living nightmare playing out in Billy's headed. The moment
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: she screamed bloody murder, banged on the door, pleaded and cried,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: None of it mattered. All that went unheard, unnoticed, unattended
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: to young Billy Holliday might as well have been as
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: dead as that girl. No one cared, not like they
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: did now. Anyway, Billy Holiday was somebody, a bold faced
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: person of note. The thousands of fans and attendance before
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: her Carnegie Hall cared. Her fellow musicians cared, The press,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the reporters who wrote about not only her music but
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: her legal troubles cared. And of course, just like they
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: did back when she was ten years old, the authorities
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: cared in their own way. That is, except now it
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't backward thinking local cops who had Billy Holiday on
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the brain. It was federal agents. And unlike the press
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: or the fans who obsessed over Billy's music, her records,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: her stunning on stage performances and appearances on screen, the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Feds cared about one thing, the same thing Billy cared about,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the thing that supplanted the music. Music was great. Sure,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: music was the only thing that came close to restoring
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: that innocence, that innocence that was ripped away from Billy
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: when she was raped and subsequently institutionalized for the first
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: time as a ten year old, and music transported Billy
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: out of herself and into another place completely. It was sublime.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: But that was on stage, Off stage, Billy needed something
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: else to transport her, to take her away, to free her,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to make up for that loss of innocence, and for
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Billy Holiday in nineteen forty eight, going as far back
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: as her adult brain would take her, that one thing
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: was indeed the thing that federal agents cared so much
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: about as well heroin. They were there in the audience
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that night, federal agents clocking Billy's new post prison moves
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: as always, if she was high on stage, they couldn't tell.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Compared to themselves, every jazz musician seemed at least a
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: little high. The Feds didn't understand what made these junkie
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: musicians tick, what made heroin so appealing. The drug wiped
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: you out, rendered you unable to do anything except not
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: out and vomit if it was good anyway, And then
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: when the high were off, all you wanted was more,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: more drugged, more that high, and you spent nearly every
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: waking moment chasing it, scheming for it, stealing for it,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: fucking over your friends and your family for it. Except
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Billie Holiday hadn't hit that sort of bottom yet. She
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't fucking over anyone for heroin. Before prison, she was
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: living large from fat paycheck to fat paycheck. Wasn't in
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the position of having to steal for her drugs. Quite
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the opposite. She was the one being worked over. On stage,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: she leaned into the effortless chill of my Man. The
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: song cut Deep made her think of Joe. Like most men,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Billy Holliday involved herself with Joe Glazer, her manager manipulated her.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: But unlike John Levy before him, or Lewis McKay after,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Joe's con was more complicated. He wasn't after Billy's hard
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: earned money that she generated as one of the country's
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: premier singing talents. Joe was up to something else, always
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: up to something else. Joe also represented another artist, one
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of Billy's favorite artists, megastar of stage and screen, Louis Armstrong.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Armstrong was no doubt the bigger of the two artists
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: on Glazier's roster and definitely his priority. Billy felt this.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: She didn't like it, but she accepted it. Billy accepted
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of things as far back as she could remember.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: She accepted the fact when she was thirteen years old
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: that if she were going to make any money, that
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: there was unfortunately only one job available to her at
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the time, the oldest profession in the world, prostitution. Billy
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Holliday was drawn to the whorehouse as a young child.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: It was a hub of activity in the neighborhood. Good
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: looking men coming and going at all hours, fancy cars
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: pulling up and pulling out, off towards some other reality,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: far away from the grind of the Baltimore grime. Billy
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and her mom were struggling through. But more than the
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: promise of something different, something else, there was the music.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: The madam kept a big Victrola record player pumping around
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the clock, and out of its big horned speaker, the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: sounds of Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday's future colleague Louis
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Armstrong filled the air. The music was infectious. It flowed
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: through the whorehouse windows onto the street. It called out
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to Billie Holiday. The age of six, Billy was running
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: errands for the madam, washing basins, putting out towels and soap.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Billy didn't even want to get paid, She just wanted
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to be around the music. It knocked her out. It
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: was jazz music, but Billy Holiday didn't know it at
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the time. She called it what everyone else in the
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: neighborhood called it horrorhouse music. By the time Billy turned
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: thirteen and had relocated to Harlem from Baltimore with her mother,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: she knew where the action was in her new neighborhood,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the horrorhouse. Billy quickly found employment once again as an
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: errand girl, and then quickly elevating herself to working girl,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: or to the status of what was commonly referred to
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: at that time as twenty dollars girl, two regulars a week,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: white dudes twenty spots a pop five each to the Madam,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and now, instead of doing laundry for other people as
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: her mother did, Billy at thirteen had housegirls who also
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: worked for the madam doing her laundry. Billy vibed on
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: her suddenly flushed purse. The sex, however, scared the hell
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: out of her. Two times a week with nice, polite
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: white dudes running around behind the backs of their wives
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: was one thing. In her autobiography, Billy told a story
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: about a man she called mister Dick. She said she
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: was still terrified from her experience with him a few
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: years earlier, even though he was paying for it and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: paying for well a fifty spot for Billy alone, he
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: was way worse. He nearly put Billy in the hospital.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: She said she couldn't walk for two days. Her mother
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: called the ambulance and the ambulance man gave Billy a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: crooked smile, But Billy remembered the rumors young black girls
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: in the late nineteen twenties being admitted into the hospital
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: for pneumonia and coming out sterile, having had their ovaries
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: involuntarily removed. No thank you, Billy told the ambulance man
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: she wasn't going anywhere. She'd take the pain and heal
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: on her own in her mother's home, and from then on,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Billy wrote, she made a pack to herself that she'd
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: only take work from white guys. Now I realized that
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: in Teeth twenty one that sounds a lot like a
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: stereotype that we'd rather not talk about. But to understand
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Billy Holiday, you need to understand who she thought she
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: was in that moment, because that's what she told a
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: neighborhood gangster named Big Blue Rainier. There was no way
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: she was taking his trick, not for twenty, not for fifty,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: not for one hundred. But Big Blue didn't want to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: hear it. He had connections and he wasn't about to
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: take this humiliation from a twenty dollars horror, so he
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: had Billy arrested for prostitution because she wouldn't take his
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: money to sleep with him. Incredibly, the hypocritic Fink move
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: worked and Billy, at fifteen years old, was sent off
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to Welfare Island. Welfare Island, New York City, nineteen twenty nine. Lunatics,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the insane, the infirm, criminally bent, ill, fit for society,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: isolated off in the middle of the East River to
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: keep the Five Borrows safe. If real reform was actually
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: part of the plan, you couldn't hell from the facilities.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Institutional drab bordering on horror, trash, filth, rats the size
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: of housecats. Violence imbued into every nook and cranny of
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the island, Predatory guards, predatory inmates, predatory patients. Billy kept
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: her head down, did her time, and when she was
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: released four months later, she slid past the predatory pimps
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: waiting for her and the rest of the recently freed
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: young women who hit the shore in Manhattan to get
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: back to their lives. Billy Holliday had other plans. Recently
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: released from incarceration as a teenager, it was clear to
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: her that whrring wasn't the way, but maybe, just maybe,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: horror house music was. Billy jumped into her singing career
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the only way she knew how. Headfirst, she started at
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Pods and Jerry's, an integrated club in Harlem where the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: gin flowed freely and the reef of smoke permanently hung
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: in the air. Crooning down on one hundred and thirty
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: third Street earned her eighteen dollars a week. She was
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: sixty years old and already soaking in the speakeasy spotlight.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: As she branched out to Covin's in the Harlem Mahambra,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: her social circle mushroomed, Count Basie and Arti Shah became fans.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Better yet, it became her bandmates. She took the work
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: where she could, even if it meant she had to
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: walk through the kitchen to enter a venue, even if
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: she had to sleep on the bus while touring with
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Arty's White Band, who slept in the White Motel. She
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: endured it all. By nineteen thirty nine, she had signed
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: with Columbia Records, and they knew her potential, saw the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: way the crowds hung on her every low, lwed, syllable.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Her voice mesmerized people. It lured people in, ensnared them,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: just like the way that cocaine and heroin had suddenly
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: ensnared her. Billie Holiday was on top, one of the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: country's biggest stars. With that feeling didn't do enough. Billy
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: needed more. Call it senses numbed, Call it stolen youth.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Call it some twisted idea of freedom. Whatever it was, stardom,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: adoring fans, the rush of live for me, none of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it did what getting high did liberated her. First it
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: was reefer, then alcohol, cocaine, then heroin, then cocaine and
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: heroin at the same time. By the time Billy Holliday
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: was twenty five years old, getting high was a daily thing.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Performing didn't matter. Billy could do the gig while stoned,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and then after the gig she'd be some more. Billy
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Holliday's constitution was Depression era tough. There was no fucking
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: with her, but that meant she needed drugs regularly, and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: for a woman of her profile, that was no easy task.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: She knew she was being watched, cops, locals, feds whoever.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: She knew she was a potential prize scout a bold
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: faced name, capable of putting a shine on the name
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: of the arresting officer in the papers. She couldn't be
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: holding everyone who was too risky. She could be searched
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: at any moment without cause. She was a black woman
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: in a very white man's world at the time, so
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a plan was hatched. Mister Mister was Billy's dog, a boxer.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Mister was smart, smarter than some of the men in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Billy's life, and definitely smarter than some of the drummers
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: she'd known. Mister was capable, Mister was trained. Mister loved Billy.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Mister was obedient. Mister was crooked as fucked. Mister got
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: recruited by Joe Guy. Joe Guy was recruited by Billy,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: first to blow a trumpet in her band, then to
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: blow her away in the sack, then to run mister
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: for her. Joe Guy every day, every day, bought an
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: ounce of heroin up on Eighth Avenue. Then he'd find mister,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: give mister a treat. Mister would sit. Joe Guy would
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: attach that ounce of heroin to Mister's caller inconspicuously. Next
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: time for mister's daily walk down Morningside Drive, over to
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the Braddock Hotel. With the Braddock sign in his sights,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Mister would know what time it was time to see
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the man in the funny hat who operated the elevator
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: for another treat. Mister would run around the back of
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the Braddock Joe guy his work gone would bounce, Mister
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: would scratch the the man and the funny hat would appear.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Mister would follow him into the hotel and into the elevator.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: He'd go and have his new treat tossed to him
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: before the doors would close up. Then the doors would open,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and that meant another treat, this tree from Billy, who'd
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: be waiting for mister on the other side of the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: opening elevator doors on the top of the floor. Out
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: of the elevator and into Billy's arms. Mister would go first,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: He'd get his treat. Then he'd gets smothered with love
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: from his mistress. Then she'd detach the special package mister
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: had brought her. She'd sit, she'd shoot, she'd sail away wild.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: She was a star, a very high star. She descended
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: from the rough and tumble streets of Baltimore, then Harlem,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: through reform school, whorehouses, welfare Island to the top of
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the music game with a bad habit, but able to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: satiate that habit from a penthouse suite via a trained
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: canine who ran drugs for her on orders from a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: man who worked for her. Billy Holliday Stone Cold, Surreal.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this word word word. It
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: was time a time in the set everyone was always
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: waiting for would she or wouldn't she? Play it? That
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: is Strange Fruit. The song became her trademark, its words
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: written by Abel Merripol. Billy first performed it back in
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine at Cafe Society. It brought the house
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: down then, and it would bring the house down now.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Strange Fruit was loaded. It was Billy Holliday's most powerful weapon,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: more potent than her sexuality, and Billy loaded that weapon
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: every night with hard emotion. The sting of racism she
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: experienced daily, be it in prison, on the streets of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: New York, gone tour throughout the Jim Crow South, being
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: led in through the back doors of clubs she'd headline,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: forced to always pack a sandwich in her purse because
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: you never knew when whichever restaurant you were forced to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: stop that wouldn't serve you. The countless trips into the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: woods on the side of the road as a woman
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: traveling in bands that were almost entirely made up of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: men to relieve yourself so humiliating. It's stun So too
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: did the thought of her daddy in the wrong part
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of the country when his lung disorder worsened Dallas, Texas.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: They wouldn't see him at the white hospital, and by
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the time he found his way to the black hospital,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it was too late. It was a Conner dead at
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: thirty eight and entirely preventable. And then there was the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: fear the lynchings. She knew how prevalent they still were,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: so prevalent, in fact, that the NAACP's fight for anti
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: lynching legislation was still going strong in nineteen thirty nine
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and facing fierce resistance from Connerce. She knew how white
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: men were still peddling postcards depicting lynchings like door to
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: door candy salesman. It sickened her almost as much as
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: it scared her. The song captured the outrage in the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: horror of seeing black bodies swinging from southern trees strange fruit. Indeed,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Billy channeled every ounce of fear and disgust into her
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: performance of Strange Fruit, and the audience loved it. Most
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: of them anyway. Some didn't want politics mixed up into
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: their cosmopolitan knights on the town, but they were a minority. Oddly,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Count Bassie was a part of this minority. Back when
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Billy was coming up and touring in Bassie's band, Bassi
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: wouldn't let her perform the song. It was too political,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: he reasoned, But Bassie was a bit backward. He doubled
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: down on that. Mammy bullshit pleased the white crowd. Even incredibly,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: had Billy wear blackface because she was so light skinned,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and that fucked her up. That made it into the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: performance of Strange Fruit. To this day, Harry Ainslinger was
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: also part of the minority that didn't love Strange Fruit. Mishner,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Narcotics didn't want politics mixed up
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: into anything social, least of all politics he didn't agree with,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: and that's exactly what he and his federal agents intended
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: on stopping. Strange Fruit was a protest song at a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: time when popular protest songs barely existed, not in the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: mainstream anyway, of course, This was before Bob Dylan, before
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Nina Simone, before Chuck d Shit. When it was performed,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: it was even before Woody Guthrie. What angered angzeing Are
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: more was the fact that this particular song was being
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: sung by a black junkie musician, and a popular one
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: at that. Except that's where the rub was. A Billie
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Holiday bust meant headlines. Headlines meant Harry got his name
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and maybe even his square mug in the papers. He
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: saw an in Joe Glazer, Billy's manager. Joe also managed
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Louie Armstrong. Louis was a chronic reefer man, smoked twenty
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: four to seven, carried constantly. He was an easy target
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and a massive name, almost too big to bust. Beloved
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: in some ways too. Blacks and whites worshiped Louis Armstrong.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: They'd come up with them, and not just cosmopolitan whites,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Middle America whites as well. Louis was practically an institution
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: busting and would bring on more headaches and was necessary.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: So Harry aimed lower to just a ring or two
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: below the bullseye and set his sights on Joe Glazer's
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: other client, Billy Holliday, a big enough name to carry
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the bust on the wires, a small enough name to
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: avoid any long legal hassles or result in bad pr in.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: The genius move was he could leverage Louis Armstrong's rea
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: for madness against the manager of both Louis Armstrong and
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Billy Holliday, Joe Glazer. Give us the fucking girl, Joe,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: or we're taking Louis down. So went thinking, cooperate with
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: us on busting Billy Holliday and we won't bust your
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: bigger client, your cash cow, Louis Armstrong. Joe Glazer had
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: no choice. He rationalized it as he was doing Billy
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a favor. It was the only way to get her
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: clean the bust, off of the stage and off to
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: prison to get down with the cold Turkey Cortet, Philadelphia,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. The plan was to bust Billy Holiday
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: with the heroin. The heroin was in Billy's Cadillac two ounces,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: but the warrant was late waiting on the judge. The
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: agents stowed someone tipped off Billy. Chauffeur tied a bounce
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: out of the City of Brotherly Love Billy and co
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Va Moost. The agents freaked. There goes their target, There
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: goes their heroin, there goes their headlines. They pulled their
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: pieces and fired off round after round. Billy ducked into
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the back seats. Bullets lodged into the passenger side door.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: The chauffeur gunned, The agents gave pursuit. The chauffeur ran
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: back street to hot routs. The agents couldn't keep up
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: North to NYC into Harlem. Free for the night, Billy
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: breathed a sigh of relief until she was busted. The
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: next day. Billy pleaded guilty possession of narcotics. The judge
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: brought down the gavel. A year and a day in
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Alderson Federal Correctional Facility, Billy did her time, she bounced,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: and now ten days later she was back in the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: spotlight on stage, free, if for only a moment. Billy
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Holliday's Carnegie Hall concert, just ten days after being released
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: from prison, was a success. The headline screamed, Billy is back.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: But her time in prison did have negative ramifications. For
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: one thing, it resulted in the loss of her cabaret card,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: effectively the piece of bureaucratic paper that allowed her to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: perform in New York City. It was small time local
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: politics bullshit, but it mattered. It meant Billy had a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: fine work out of town, which was easy, but still
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: not being able to work in town was humiliating. Billy's
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: reputation followed her or wherever she went, so too did
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: federal agents. Nothing changed, There was no presumption of rehabilitation,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and there was no real rehabilitation. Billy went back to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: performing and went back to getting high, this time in
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: lockstep with her new man and manager, John Levy. He
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: was married and had a kid, but that didn't seem
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to stop him or Billy from taking up an affair.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Levy managed Billy as well. Then There was no fine romance.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It was piss and vinegar from the start, pretty much,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the two fought endlessly. Levy drank Levee scam side trim
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Levey ignored Billy's sire. Levy beat Billy. Levy pushed Billy
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: back up on stage. Levey collected checks at the end
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: of the night. Levy let Billy have just enough. Levy,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: like Joe Laser before him, was an informant, but from
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: way back the FED sponsored Levy. The Fed's let Levy
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: be Levy in exchange for Boku finked her. Billy was
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: small time and attic, a user, not a trafficker, but
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: she had that name that Levee kept and lights. Levy
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: ratted his woman out. In San Francisco, Billy Holliday got
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: busted again, this time for smoking hop opium Levy van Moost.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Billy got shrink jail, Billy got out. Billy got a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: new man, worse than the first, slightly better than less,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Louis McKay. He may have been her husband, but he
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: managed Billy doped up and working, work, work, and more work.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Billy's health deteriorated before everyone's eyes. Didn't matter. Those performance
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: fees were large. Louis McKay knew how to get his
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: girl to earn. Billy may have dodged the pimps coming
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: off of Welfare Island years ago, but she worked as
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: hard or harder for the predatory men in her life
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: ever since, even as of late in her mid forties.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: At least horrors get to retire after a while, and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: there was no retiring for Billie Holiday. Just work, tours, sessions, press, repeat.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Through it all, she somehow remained irrelevant and impactful artist,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: appearing numerous times on television Steve Allen, Mike Wallace, art Ford.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Even with that old pain in the ass count Basie.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Billie Holliday's trademark sensual performance style was now perforated with
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: hard earned experience. You can see it on screen and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: hear it on record. Billy's last recordings are some of
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: her best, particularly nineteen fifty eight's All or Nothing at All.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: You can still hear in Billy's recorded performance that movement,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: that freedom, that dizzying high effect. Her voice was capable
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of conjuring whether or not she felt that freedom. That
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: feeling she felt on stage when things were really clicking
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: POD's and Jerry's back, when she was getting her start
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Carnegie Hall after prison, was something that only she knew. Regardless,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: she kept using drugs, kept searching for that feeling, that
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: freedom in the needle, And it was no secret. America
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: was wise, and America was watching and listening to see
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: if their junkie pop songstress would nod out right there
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: in front of them on screen and on record. It
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: was a slow moving train wreck, the Billie Holiday story.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Everyone knew how it was going to end, and they
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: knew it was going to end soon, but no one
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: knew it was going to end like this. May thirty first,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, Billy Holiday's few remaining close friends checked
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: her into New York's Metropolitan Hospital. Billy was forty four
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: years old and in bad shape cirrhosis of the liver.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: She'd lost twenty pounds in much of her strength. Billy
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't going anywhere. The doctors knew it. This was the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: short coda before the stage exit. There'd be no encore.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Death was thick in that hospital air, but that didn't
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: stop g Man Narco Fucko Henry j Anslinger. As long
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: as Billie Holiday was above ground, Billy Holliday was a threat.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Ainsinger hadn't forgotten strange fruit protest music from a black entertainer,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: a black female entertainer. Ainslinger was never going to let
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: it go. The stakes for him were too high. He
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: had an entire nation social order to maintain. Everyone had
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: their place from Ainslinger's point of view, and Billie Holiday
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: clearly didn't know hers or her people. So judgment was
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: swift and punishment a must. Ainsinger thought of Psalm seven
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to eleven. God is an honest judge. He is angry
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: with the wicked every day. Simple true, but that passage
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: didn't jazz. Ainsinger's eyre complete. He pulled from his memory
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Timothy three one dash five. But understand this that in
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the last days there will come times of difficulty, for
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: without self control, brutal, treacherous, swollen with conceit, lovers of
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: pleasure rather than lovers of God. Avoid such people. Henry
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Ainslinger did the opposite. He didn't avoid avoid such people,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: people like Billy Holliday. He confronted and crushed such people
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: so that America could avoid such people. Junkie jazz musicians
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: were a scourge. That was the Fed mantra, especially those
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: with high minded ideas about equality. Billy Holiday, with her
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: fur coats, her cadillacs, her heroine and her protest song,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Who did she think she was? Ainslinger knew who she was.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Uncle Sam knew who she was, and sure as shit,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: God knew who Billy Holliday was. As she lay dying
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: in her hospital bed, Henry Ainslinger and his federal agent
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: stormed into her hospital room and arrested Billy Holliday her
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: possession of illegal narcotics heroin. Her new arraignment would be
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: in a few weeks. Billy Holiday died before being judged
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: one more time in her hospital bed, handcuffed offstage on drugs.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: The opposite of free. So incredibly sad, Such a disgrace.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan and this this Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: by Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
• 35:41
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• 35:43
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• 35:47
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• 35:51
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• 35:55
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• 36:00
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• 36:04
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• 36:08
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• 36:12
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• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Rock a Roller. He's the bed don Man.