Profiling Lady Day:
"Billie Holiday was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me" -Frank Sinatra Deserted by her father at a young age and forced to work from the age of 6 on, Billie Holiday or "Lady Day" grew to become one of the most legendary jazz singers of all time. Hear her sing and you will have yet more evidence that ALL truly are born exceptional.	Billie Holiday
But Billie led a troubled childhood. Her mother would often just leave her in the care of relatives and with the feeling of shame and loneliness, Billie developed a strong inferiority complex. She became self destructive. When Billie was six years of age her grandmother died and the family blamed the death on Billie's behavior. At ten she was victimized in a violent rape. When she became older she worked at a brothel where she cleaned the floors and ran odd jobs. It was here that she first listened to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. "The emotional intensity that she put into the words she sang (particularly in later years) was...almost scary; she often really did live the words she sang." -Scott Yanow Despite a lack of technical training, Holiday's unique diction, inimitable phrasing and dramatic intensity made her the most incredible jazz singer of her time. White gardenias, worn in her hair, became her trademark. She joined the Count Basie band in 1937, but Basie eventually let her go for being too "independent and temperamental". In 1941 she married Johnie Monroe and shortly afterward began abusing drugs. The marriage with Johnie did not last long and she soon remarried to a trumpeter named Joe Guy. But even with the new marriage the marital and drug abuse continued. McKay, similar to her other two husbands, turned out to be abusive as well. Then while touring Europe she was arrested again on charges of drugs. Trying to regain her life she entered a drug rehabilitation clinic. But her drug and marital problems continued to worsen. On the summer day of July 17, 1957 Billie Holiday's problems finally caught up with her. She died at the early age of 44. While her Profile surely changed often through the span of her life, Holiday's ability to be completely absorbed by her music have the distinct mark of Evokateur Working while her strong need for independence and her passion indicate to us Realist Thinking. And for the way she guarded her past and trudged through barriers of racism I suggest Sentinel Emoting. Whatever was behind that Sentinel appearance was the torture that drove her to drugs and that also drove her to music. Realist/Evokateur/Sentinel Billie Holiday quotes: "You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music. "I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music." "If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing." "You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation." "Billie Holiday's voice was the voice of living intensity of soul in the true sense of that greatly abused word. As a human being she was sweet, sour, kind, mean, generous, profane, lovable and impossible, and nobody who knew her expects to see anyone quite like her again" -Leonard Feather

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