#1
Posted: 8/20/05 at 6:10pm
Holiday did not need any drugs to "inform" her work - or to use , god help me, "collective memory" nonsense...
Here's a rundown:
Born out of wedlock to a mother who was never there
Raped at age eight
Sent to reform school at age nine
Molested by older girls at above reform school
Moved to Harlem and became teen prostitute
Arrested on morals charges
Subject to disgraceful indignacies of being black on the road with white swing bands and on radio
Watched a lynching...
Married to three a-holes who beat her senseless many times..
The woman did not need drugs to inform anything.....What the booze, smoke, pot and heroin (snorted - which is all but acid on vocal cords) did was take a moderate but well controlled voice backed with a dead on sense of swing and turned her voice into shreds and her mind into mush...
Listen to the early Columbia sides with Lester Young - Like two angels spreading joy into the night.....all before the drugs hit!
Here's a rundown:
Born out of wedlock to a mother who was never there
Raped at age eight
Sent to reform school at age nine
Molested by older girls at above reform school
Moved to Harlem and became teen prostitute
Arrested on morals charges
Subject to disgraceful indignacies of being black on the road with white swing bands and on radio
Watched a lynching...
Married to three a-holes who beat her senseless many times..
The woman did not need drugs to inform anything.....What the booze, smoke, pot and heroin (snorted - which is all but acid on vocal cords) did was take a moderate but well controlled voice backed with a dead on sense of swing and turned her voice into shreds and her mind into mush...
Listen to the early Columbia sides with Lester Young - Like two angels spreading joy into the night.....all before the drugs hit!
Updated On: 8/20/05 at 06:10 PM
