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S like Amy Winehouse and Adele Most of the writing on Holiday has focused on the tragic details of her life her prostitution at the age of fourteen her heroin addiction and alcoholism her series of abusive relationships or tried to correct the many fabrications of her autobiography But Billie Holiday strips away the myths and puts her music front and center staying close to her artistry her performance style and the self she created and put on record and Probably the best book I ve read about Billie Holiday and the genius of her musical talent Szwed takes the long view on Holiday focusing his sights on what ma
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“Revelatory one of the most briskly revealing pieces of jazz biography that I’ve read” Richard Brody The New Yorker When Billie Holiday first stepped into a recording studio in November it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and influential career in twentieth century popular music Her voice weathered countless shifts in popular taste and today new reincarnations of her continue to arrive most recently in the form of singer The concept of The Musician and the Myth was very intriguing as most bios take a rather conventional approach In the average book focusing on a performer you
John Szwed ✓ 9 Download
Onstage Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade critically acclaimed jazz writer and musician John Szwed presents not just a biography but a meditation on Billie Holiday’s art and its relation to her life Along the way he illuminates her influences her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius her signature songs including Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child and her enduring legacy as the greatest jazz singer of all time It was okThe first section of the book was very interesting and kept my attention completely I feel like the second section of the book was like reading a bor
oops It was actually the paperback version I read but that's okay When my brain clears from flu fog I'll be back to write about this book but for now I really really enjoyed reading it It offers a number of insights not only into Holiday as an individual but also into her somewhat controversial Lady Sings the Blues into her music a
The concept of The Musician and the Myth was very intriguing as most bios take a rather conventional approach In the average book focusing on a performer you get a chronological look at their private lives with a a dutiful glance at his or her career and almost always they use the career as a way to further unde
A must read not only for Billie Holiday fans but for anyone with even a passing interest in musical history Well written and meticulously researched the author John Szwed––director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University––knows his stuff and disabuses the oft mistaken notion that Holiday was primar
Probably the best book I've read about Billie Holiday and the genius of her musical talent Szwed takes the long view on Holiday focusing his sights on what made her vocalizations so uniue and so enduring examining the music she made and the genres that surrounded that music Szwed deals with Holiday's personal story tragically self destructive as it was only in terms of how it affected her music Most heartbreaking were his descriptions of t
Billie Holiday The Musician and the Myth by John Szwed is a free NetGalley ebook that I read while on a roadtrip to Chicago because w
This book renewed my intrigue in Lady Day I loved learning about the descriptions of her personality sometimes rough profane caustic and vengefulwitty kindand perceptive 107 Szwed doesn't deny that she had a drug addiction but he does
Fact filled informative biography of Billie Holiday which also provides excellent information about the evolution of blues jazz RB and other popular American music Better editing would have made this an even compelling bio
Good review of her recorded work
It was okThe first section of the book was very interesting and kept my attention completely I feel like the second section of the book was like reading a boring dossier I could hardly keep my eyes open to read the last section of t
This book ended up being a biography based on an autobiography written while she was still alive It was interesting in a few parts but it was very drawn out and slow in the majority of it To be honest it left me wanting to go read her original autobiography rather than finishing this book I routinely found myself thinking that and feeling sad that I had so much of this book to dredge through to get to it If