Customer Reviews

With Billie: A New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been a Billie Holiday fan since I was in my teens, but I'd never read a biography of her. I avoided the "Lady Sings the Blues" autobiography, after hearing how much of it was just plain wrong or made up. And I was never able to decide which of the existing bios to read, until I saw this one in my Amazon recommendations. After reading the description, and realizing that it was taken from interviews of people who actually lived and worked with Billie -- and loved her -- I knew this would be the one I read.

This book isn't so much about Billie as it is haunted by her. The interviews construct a rough timeline of her life, but still drift in and out of various periods. You get a sense of Billie. You catch a glimpse of her here and there. Once in awhile her voice breaks through, so you hear it clearly. The overall effect is somewhat ghostly. And at the end, when the picture of her last days begins to come into sharp focuse, she fades away again.

This is a book written by a Billie Holiday fan, for Billie Holiday fans, that presents her both through the eyes of those who knew the flesh and blood woman, and through the eyes of someone captivated by the legend. There are fascinating details throughout, and author manages to fill in the holes just enough to hold the story together. Even the footnotes are worth reading.

Some have complained about there not being enough pictures of Billie in the book. The truth is that this book should really be a companion to the recently released "Billie Holiday: The Ultimate Collection" box set, because most of Linda Khuel's pictures (Khuel did the original interviews before her suicide) ended up on the DVD portion of that package. (Another must for a Holiday fan.)

As one reviewer said, it's an addictive read. I found it impossible to put down, and like someone in the audience at one of Billie's concerts, in the end I was left wanting more.

Julia Blackburn's biographical WITH BILLIE is a fascinating slant on the legendary singer. The author did a brilliant job editing the original interviews conducted by Linda Kuehl, leaving this work vibrant with the voices of Lady Day's contemporaries. It is more oral history than biography, and the author never imposes her own voice unnecessarily.

I was literally sad when I completed reading the book,the ultimate litmus test of a work's enjoyability. Blackburn shows Holiday vividly, her genius, her deep flaws, her humanity.

This book is a must-read for fans of Lady Day, jazz, or female singers everywhere.

This book offers a new and insightful look into the tangled, intriguing life of Lady Day. However, it only has ONE photo of the legend in the entire book. I would like to have seen more photos, copies of documents mentioned, and other visual aids included. That's about the only negative thing about this book. A must have for the Billie collector.

This is a fascinating and very readable book. It's not a biography. It could be more accurately described as an oral history told by those who knew the immortal Billie Holiday, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Ms. Blackburn had complete access to the tapes and transcriptions of interviews that Linda Kuehl conducted for her planned (before her untimely death) book on Ms. Holiday. But instead of interpreting and parsing these interviews as other biographers have done, Ms. Blackburn allows the interviewees to speak for themselves in extended excerpts. The result is as if we were allowed the privilege of sitting down with several of Ms. Holidays friends and acquaintances and hearing the real skinny for ourselves. For those of us who are devotees of Lady Day, this book is a revelation and a reminder that despite their towering achievements, all our heroes and heroines have feet of clay.

An amalgam of interviews of people who knew Billie Holliday, each giving his or her version of Billie's life. Not easy reading sometimes -- maybe the information in the footnotes could have been incorporated in the text more smoothly -- but the thoughts and feelings of all these people, taken together, form a portrait of Billie that is immediate and vibrant, full of joy and grief, but at the same time that keeps you aware that you can never know the source of the magic of great artistry.

Julia Blackburn's biography of Billie Holiday is disappointing. She makes poor use of what appears to be excellent research by Linda Kuehl. Some of the interview material is fascinating, but it is poorly cobbled together.

It's small wonder that this book gets intolerant and hateful reviews like that of Desiree Troy (though I suspect this particular reviewer is very young and inexperienced, given their extremely naive perspective). You get very little sense from reading this book of why Billie Holiday's music is still important to people nearly fifty years after her death, and seventy years after her prime.

You cannot evaluate Billie Holiday just from reading this book, and in fact you probably shouldn't read it at all.

This is a rehash of interviews that were used much better by Stuart Nicholson. How Julia Blackburn can take credit for writing a book is beyond me.
As for Billie Holiday I love her work and her lifestyle was for the times the story of many black women that will forever go untold.
Prostitution was rampant during the great depression and any reader who wants to moralize best do so on a empty stomich. As for billes ghost wrtitten biography if you read it properly then read stuart nicholsons work u will see many truths that beforehand were thought of as lies. This book disappointed me greatly and I've read evry damn book they have written about her. Thank god I read it 4 free at the libary. Its not bad but it isn't good either

That deserves a good review. A couple reviews posted on here focus on Billie Holliday and her lifestyle, it puzzles me why they would even read the book, if you hated the woman so much -- nevertheless, they insisted on sharing their opinion of the person, not the book --so a lot of negative comments that aren't deserved get heaped onto the book --

First off, I don't know if you can fully appreciate this book unless you've listened to Billie Holliday extensively and have a cursory knowledge of what happened to her...

Just picking up this book and plodding through it -- I think will leave you frustrated -- if you don't know which years, were her best recording years and when life started to go horribly wrong for her then you lose many details that are given away in the book -- if you haven't listened to several different recordings of the same song, you won't understand what makes this woman so talented, because by all accounts most people would find her voice unique -- but not classified under the definition of a spectacular voice -- so the fact that she never sung the same song the same way, twice and that her phrasing and timing is one of a jazz instrumentalist, not a singer... you'll end up wondering why Blackburn wasted her time on an alcoholic drug addicted and abused woman.

In the end, the book will paint a faded picture of a woman -- her fears -- unrealized dreams -- and her music will fill in the rest. If you've ever listened to out takes of Holliday talking between takes -- you would suspect she was a pretty rough woman -- I found this book shed some light on her compassionate side... the fact that if you were her friend, she would give you the shirt off her back.

Through interviews, layers of assurance are slowly built up -- and what is left is not a laundry list of facts -- because many of the people interviewed were old -- or junkies -- or drunks -- so sometimes things are hazy... but they still convey the spirit of the woman -- they know she was a good person, that was caught in an endless cycle of booze, drugs and abuse, she just couldn't rise above it --

I think the most fascinating thing about this book, why it ranks so highly in my opinion -- is the discovery that this giant of her industry feared the same thing that the people that live in everyday America do -- and her desires and dreams were not far from the person that goes to a cubicle everyday --in the end, and what makes her life seem somewhat tragic -- she realized too late that all that matters are the people we love and those that love us back.

Fifty years on and I see from the reviews that Billie is still a controversial figure. I think the book is a very truthful one. Given the life she lived and the lives of those who knew her best, no standard biography could tell the story as well as these recorded memories, which reveal that there is hardly one undisputed "fact" about her life. You are left with a confused, conflicting, and contradictory story, but I think that IS the story. Except for the music of course, which is where the real truth lies.

The book falls short of five stars only because of a few rather perfunctory diversions into black American history, the occasional excessive speculation (he or she "must have" thought or done this or that) and odd gaps (an interview with Count Basie is referred to in a footnote only, and there is not a single mention of the many Verve recording sessions she did with her favourite musicians in the '50s).

Some of the reviews are puzzling. But one claim (that Blackburn barely acknowledges Linda Kuehl's contribution) is just ridiculous. The index list 50 pages with references to Kuehl (more than anyone except Billie herself), there is an acknowledgement at the very front of the book, and the second chapter explains in detail the background to Kuehl's tapes and transcripts. The book as a whole illustrates why Kuehl struggled and failed to turn the raw material into a biography.

I could not help but reply to your incompetent review of this book. The idea of a "book review" is to share your opinion of the BOOK, not the PERSON the book is about. If you hate Billie Holiday so much, why did you bother reading it in the first place? Nobody ever made her out to be an angel, and your words smack of ignorance and gut-buckety stupidity. She was a troubled woman, likely from either being black or being female (or being both!) at a very intolerant time in history. She was a known heroin addict and died as a result of her addiction, which was probably fueled by her frustration and sadness during these notoriously oppressive times. Can you imagine being allowed to sing and perform in a club, but having to use the service entrance simply because you are black? This was a reality for Billie Holiday and many other talented singers and musicians of this era. Someone as clueless as yourself need not interject their narrow-minded opinion of a complex, sorrowful, and timeless legend such as Billie Holiday. She has touched generations after her, for numerous reasons, and remains a haunting mystery to most. Being "ladylike" wasn't an option for everyone, and rarely do quiet women make history. So do the world a favor from now on, and keep your idiotic, sophomoric, and largely offensive opinions to yourself, and let others with genuine insight (good, bad or indifferent) help shape people's decisions. If you have nothing constructive to say, say nothing.