Read Online With Billie by Julia Blackburn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Julia Blackburn
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the musician Walter Johnson. Ken Burns in
Jazz
gives a very different impression of Clarence, whose ‘flashy example helped lure her into the music business [and] whose hustling ways were mirrored in many of the predatory men she would later call “Daddy” ’ (p. 206).
‡ ‘Catting’ comes from the word ‘tomcat’ and means ‘to seek women for sexual reasons’. It can also mean to gossip or to loaf about (
Dictionary of American Slang
).
§ She was so light-skinned she could pass as white. She turned up towards the end of Billie’s life and for a while tried to contest the will. In March 1987, the Attorney at Law, L. Mifflin Hayes, who was representing the estate of Billie’s last husband Louis McKay, wrote a very stern letter regarding a Grammy award that had been claimed on Billie’s behalf by a woman called Nicole Holiday, who said she was Billie’s half-sister: ‘It should be noted that the name Billie Holiday was a stage name, not her real name. Secondly … to the best of my knowledge, she had no sisters or other close blood relatives.’
‖ Fanny was in the same apartment when she was interviewed by Linda Kuehl in December 1971.
THIRTEEN
Pop Foster
‘It was only show people.’
C larence ‘Pop’ Foster was a vaudeville comic who performed with various partners on the black theatre circuit in America and in theatres throughout Europe. Linda Kuehl first interviewed him in January 1972 while he was doing the Wednesday Night Amateur competitions at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She said that when he came on stage, ‘He stood before the curtain with a frayed tweed overcoat over his shoulders as though it were a luxurious cape. His voice was thick with alcohol, but elegant and almost-British just the same.’ She interviewed him a second time in the nearby Paradise Bar in May 1972. Here he is talking:
I met Billie when she was sixteen years old, but she was big. She was a big fat slob and she’d wear the same dress every night; a common dress, not an evening gown. She used to put on anything and I’d call her a big fat slob.
In those days she did a little prostitution up here in Harlem. Along 136th Street was kind of the main drag and 132nd Street by the Lafayette Theater. I used to see her every night and every day. I knew she was doingit because I was in that life myself. You dig? So I knew everything that was going on. But you wouldn’t say she was one of those common prostitutes that you see hanging out on the streets; she was a girl that was a very lovable person and she had her own way about things. She was an all-around girl.
She was young and she didn’t know what was going on until she won this amateur contest and that’s when she went on to stardom. That’s when she found out she could sing. Then she began to know where she was really at.
She was singing in nightclubs and getting whatever they would pay her, and some nights she didn’t get nothing. She just wanted to sing, you dig, she wanted to sing but she needed money and at that time she wasn’t making money. We were working to be working. We’d work for whatever they threw on the floor. When she was working for me we got paid off at Jerry’s Log Cabin in chicken and waffles. We’d get money and we’d split up maybe ten or twenty dollars between us.
About 1928 or 1927 she was singing at the Hot Cha and this was really when people began to notice her, and from then on it was
Billie Holiday
! From then on. All the show people were nuts for her! We used to jam in every night at the Hot Cha, just to hear her sing. And then some actor gave her the name of Lady Day and then we started to call her Lady Day. Billie had a lot of white friends and a lot of
ofay
* men used to go for her, because she could sing.
We used to smoke pot a lot together. In the hotels there in Harlem, in the Braddock, in the Theresa. Or we’d bump into each other at parties. She wasn’t a loud girl; she was kind of a shy girl, quiet in a way,
Jazz
gives a very different impression of Clarence, whose ‘flashy example helped lure her into the music business [and] whose hustling ways were mirrored in many of the predatory men she would later call “Daddy” ’ (p. 206).
‡ ‘Catting’ comes from the word ‘tomcat’ and means ‘to seek women for sexual reasons’. It can also mean to gossip or to loaf about (
Dictionary of American Slang
).
§ She was so light-skinned she could pass as white. She turned up towards the end of Billie’s life and for a while tried to contest the will. In March 1987, the Attorney at Law, L. Mifflin Hayes, who was representing the estate of Billie’s last husband Louis McKay, wrote a very stern letter regarding a Grammy award that had been claimed on Billie’s behalf by a woman called Nicole Holiday, who said she was Billie’s half-sister: ‘It should be noted that the name Billie Holiday was a stage name, not her real name. Secondly … to the best of my knowledge, she had no sisters or other close blood relatives.’
‖ Fanny was in the same apartment when she was interviewed by Linda Kuehl in December 1971.
THIRTEEN
Pop Foster
‘It was only show people.’
C larence ‘Pop’ Foster was a vaudeville comic who performed with various partners on the black theatre circuit in America and in theatres throughout Europe. Linda Kuehl first interviewed him in January 1972 while he was doing the Wednesday Night Amateur competitions at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She said that when he came on stage, ‘He stood before the curtain with a frayed tweed overcoat over his shoulders as though it were a luxurious cape. His voice was thick with alcohol, but elegant and almost-British just the same.’ She interviewed him a second time in the nearby Paradise Bar in May 1972. Here he is talking:
I met Billie when she was sixteen years old, but she was big. She was a big fat slob and she’d wear the same dress every night; a common dress, not an evening gown. She used to put on anything and I’d call her a big fat slob.
In those days she did a little prostitution up here in Harlem. Along 136th Street was kind of the main drag and 132nd Street by the Lafayette Theater. I used to see her every night and every day. I knew she was doingit because I was in that life myself. You dig? So I knew everything that was going on. But you wouldn’t say she was one of those common prostitutes that you see hanging out on the streets; she was a girl that was a very lovable person and she had her own way about things. She was an all-around girl.
She was young and she didn’t know what was going on until she won this amateur contest and that’s when she went on to stardom. That’s when she found out she could sing. Then she began to know where she was really at.
She was singing in nightclubs and getting whatever they would pay her, and some nights she didn’t get nothing. She just wanted to sing, you dig, she wanted to sing but she needed money and at that time she wasn’t making money. We were working to be working. We’d work for whatever they threw on the floor. When she was working for me we got paid off at Jerry’s Log Cabin in chicken and waffles. We’d get money and we’d split up maybe ten or twenty dollars between us.
About 1928 or 1927 she was singing at the Hot Cha and this was really when people began to notice her, and from then on it was
Billie Holiday
! From then on. All the show people were nuts for her! We used to jam in every night at the Hot Cha, just to hear her sing. And then some actor gave her the name of Lady Day and then we started to call her Lady Day. Billie had a lot of white friends and a lot of
ofay
* men used to go for her, because she could sing.
We used to smoke pot a lot together. In the hotels there in Harlem, in the Braddock, in the Theresa. Or we’d bump into each other at parties. She wasn’t a loud girl; she was kind of a shy girl, quiet in a way,
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