Episode #99 | 4.5.22
Billie Holiday: Heroin Hounds, ‘Whorehouse Music,’ and the Queen of Jazz
In this episode
Billie Holiday ascended from the rough and tumble streets of Baltimore and Harlem, through reform school, brothels, and Welfare Island, right to the top of the music game. Her childhood fascination with “whorehouse music” filled a void in her lost innocence, but she soon found a second stabilizer: Heroin. Just when her sensational “Strange Fruit” brought her to Columbia Records, her dependency on hard drugs landed her behind bars. Her mesmerizing voice ensnared listeners unlike any other jazz singer of her day, but in the end, it was narcotics that eventually ensnared Billie Holiday and sealed her fate. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners and includes descriptions of sexual assault.
Sources
Lady Sings the Blues, by Billie Holiday
Billie (2019, dir. James Erskine)
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021, dir. Lee Daniels)
Lady Sings the Blues (1972, dir. Sidney J. Furie)
Billie Holiday (The Guardian)
Island for the infirm: Black and white photographs reveal life inside New York’s 1930s rehab centre on Welfare Island (Daily Mail)
Magazine and newspaper articles (Visual Discography of “Lady Day” Billie Holiday)
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Music
Hosted, written, and scored by Jake Brennan.
Copy editing by Pat Healy.
Mixed and Engineered by Sean Cahalin.
Disgraceland theme song, "Crenshaw Space Boogie" written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak