Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon (Paperback)

~ Donald Clarke (Author) "In August 1619 a Dutch man-of-war stopped in Virginia and sold the residents twenty Negroes..." (more)
Key Phrases: cabaret card, New York, Billie Holiday, Lady Day (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Reissue of the year." -- Downbeat

Product Description

Based on unrivaled access to archival interviews with those who knew her at every stage of her life, the most revealing biography of the incomparable Lady Day.

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 1970's--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."

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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 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #636,192 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 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 (REAL NAME)

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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.

4 of 4 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

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative, January 19, 2009

By	RJM Music Man "RJM Music Man" (Philadelphia, Pa) - See all my reviews

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Unlike other books this seems to have many more facts that fiction attached to it (if you take the author's word on that) and I see no reason not to. How great was she after still having a life like hers? It's amazing that she made it to age 44. I wish they would do another movie of her life. "Lady Sings The Blues", although acted very well by Diana Ross, was a fictional account of her life and should not be recognized as a biography of any kind (except that she had a drug problem).

The only problem I had with this book was that at times it lacked continuity and was hard to follow. Still recommended though.