Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon [Paperback]

Donald Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 2002

Certainly no singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. "Now, finally, we have a definitive biography," said Booklist of Donald Clarke's Billie Holiday, "by a deeply compassionate, respectful, and open-minded biographer [whose] portrait embraces every facet of Holiday's paradoxical nature, from her fierceness to her vulnerability, her childlikeness to her innate elegance and amazing strength." Clarke was given unrivaled access to a treasure trove of interviews from the 1970s—interviews with those who knew Lady Day from her childhood in the streets and good-time houses of Baltimore through the early days of success in New York and into the years of fame, right up to her tragic decline and death at the age of forty-four. Clarke uses these interviews to separate fact from fiction and, in the words of the Seattle Times, "finally sets us straight. . .evoking her world in all its anguish, triumph, force and irony." Newsday called this "a thoroughly riveting account of Holiday and her milieu." The New York Times raved that it "may be the most thoroughly valuable of the many books on Holiday," and Helen Oakley Dance in JazzTimes said, "We should probably have to wait a long time for another life of Billie Holiday to supersede Donald Clarke's achievement."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born Elinore Harris in Philadelphia, jazz and blues singer Billie Holiday (1915-59) was abandoned by her itinerant musician father, then by her stepfather, and got little sense of self-esteem from her exploitive mother. Holiday became a prostitute, and later, while achieving cult status in Harlem, a heroin addict. In Clarke's remarkably insightful biography, a joy to read, the singer emerges as a vulnerable woman who had unrewarding affairs with unsuitable men out of her fear of deeper love. Nevertheless, writes Clarke, editor of The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music , she was a charismatic interpretive artist touched with grace, who fought entrenched racism in the music industry. This marvelously evocative portrait places her performances firmly in the African American subculture from which they sprang. Clarke includes testimonies from Holiday's close associates, whom the late Linda Kuehl interviewed in 1970-72 for a never-completed biography. Crammed with jazz history and lore and sketches of legendary musicians, this biography will have great appeal for Holiday fans and jazz followers. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Clarke (editor, Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Viking, 1989) bases this substantial biography on transcripts of interviews made in the early 1970s with dozens of people close to Billie Holiday. One of his recurring themes is the often contradictory statements made by Holiday and William Duffy in Lady Sings the Blues (1956); Clarke sets the record straight with page after page of verbatim testimony from Billie's cohorts, keeping his own interpretive biographical commentary to a minimum. His intelligent organizaton of the material is supplemented with evidence of solid background reading, and lively, articulate discussions of the recordings reveal Clarke's great love of the Lady's music. The singer, her songs, and her society are warmly illuminated in this well-done, major work. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
Bonnie Jo Dopp, formerly with Dist. of Columbia P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (June 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306811367
• ISBN-13: 978-0306811364
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Billie, August 18, 2006

By 

Bob Chorba "Bobbyc" (Milwaukee, Wisconsin United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon (Paperback)

This was the best Bio I have read on Billie. Previous Bios never were clear on how many times she was married. Actually she was only married twice. There was also quite a bit of detail on her growing up in Baltimore. I always thought that Billie was from the Pennsylvania Ave. section of West Baltimore. But she actually grew up near Fells Point. LATER she moved near to the Royale Theatre in West Baltimore. Also there is clarification of the relationship between her Mother and Father.
HOWEVER there was too much description of her later drug use. (If you have read one Junkies life (as in John Belushi) you don't need to read about the drug use in another Junkie.) BUT there was also clarification that her addiction didn't start because of a white Band Member (which was shown in the movie).
Of the 4 books that I have read on Billie this was the best.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chinese take-out, a bottle of gin, and thou: a superb biography of Billie Holiday, February 3, 2009

By 

David P. (New York, N.Y. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon (Paperback)

When writing about American jazz, Donald Clarke's prose style is often that of the hip insider: he captures Billie Holiday's world in a way no other biography or study of the singer has managed to do. This is neither a straightforward narrative or a cautionary tale, and readers attempting to breeze through its pages in order to pick off the highlights may well be thrown by Clarke's casual story telling, which is given to warm-hearted floating asides, including descriptions of sessions and performances, and analysis of individual records, all of it interspersed with vivid and often lengthy comments from his interviewees. Clarke cares deeply for this woman, his patience seems inexhaustible, and his anger at the racism and stupidity of the times can make a page tremble without disrupting the cool assurance of his methods, but he also has a sense of humor in all this: you have to love a biography that gives the last word to pianist Jimmy Rowles, whose affectionate two page monologue ends with Billie tucked into bed with Chinese take-out and a bottle of gin for company.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent biography of Billie Holiday, January 22, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday (Hardcover)

Wishing on the Moon is a real find for Billie Holiday fans who would like to learn more about her. The book gives a lot of detail from interviews with people who knew and worked with her. At various points the author lovingly corrects errors in Billie's own ghost written autobiography "Lady Sings the Blues". Many of the chapters are as much detailed discography as biography. I really liked knowing who the musicians were who recorded with her on various songs. My only criticism is that I can't always find the page that I want to refer back to for song details. Definitely one of the best biographies I have read in the past few years