|
• To Billie With Love
…Billie had the ability to be like the land, she was able to take every woman's tears - black or white, from my mother to a woman in Brooklyn to a woman in Russia - that they all felt that this woman understood their desires, their passion, their secrets, I mean that just doesn't happen every year…There's something when she sings that makes you feel like that she knows what you are going through - because she does. You can't read the book, so when we hear her sing we know that she knows and there's something about that - there's a deep friendship that I think women have had with her over the years because she's walked the road before us…
- Tori Amos
|
I was a kid in NY City in the 70's which was a highly politicized time, so we all learned about Billie Holiday as an icon:
she was black, she was dignified, she was called 'Lady Day' because she never pandered to the crowd's wishes, and in terms of the music:
it's classic, it's beautiful, and it never misses… - Suzanne Vega
|
Some people have a brilliance - it comes from way deep inside and there isn't any way to describe it,
but it comes to mind, seeing Billie on television, and wanting to cry, and it has to do with some soul that
comes through. There's something so deep in what she did that I think she's a great artist and will really last forever…
- Joan Baez
|
When I was first in NY City I bought one of these amazing posters, it's kind of a dayglo poster in bright blue and orange and with a wonderful flower in her hair, and that was on every wall of every apartment with thumb tacks and tape, and it was so chewed round the edges that when I got my first check that I think was for $5000 for signing with Warner Brothers records, the first thing I did was to take it to a proper framing place and get them to frame it…and it's still on the wall in my house…
- Emmylou Harris
|
I think that her great communication was reality. You could hear her sing something and think ‘Oh my God…. I know how you feel Lady! ‘
- Annie Ross
|
Her singing was just so deep and so rich and so telling, it was beyond story telling: the ability to just be
able to speak to you in an intimate kind of way. And at the young age of 19 and 20 I needed to hear her…
- Dianne Reeves
|
Billie's sound reminded me of my own loneliness. I had been sent from California as a small child with no companion other
than my brother – who was 2 years older than me – I was 3. We were sent with tags on our arms –
without chaperons. My brother and I felt we had been totally abandoned. When I heard Billie Holiday's voice it reminded me of trains, going somewhere, in the dark…
- Maya Angelou
|
|
