Billie Holiday: The Graphic Novel

Billie Holiday: The Graphic Novel
Author: Ebony Gilbert
Publisher: Fantoons
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781970047134

Dive into the celebrated life of “Lady Day” with this fully-illustrated graphic novel that tells the story of Billie Holiday’s rapid—and, at times, grueling—rise to become one of the best musicians who ever lived. From her days as a young entertainer performing for small jazz clubs in Harlem, to headlining sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall, every trouble and triumph of Billie Holiday's bold, influential career is featured in this graphic novel from Fantoons. Throughout the book’s 144 pages of dazzling color illustrations, readers will revisit Billie’s peak years as she helped lead the transition from the Harlem Renaissance to the iconic Swing Era alongside some of the top names in jazz—including Artie Shaw, Lester Young, and Count Basie. Meanwhile, readers will learn the true history behind the making and recording of some of Billie’s most-classic hits, like “God Bless the Child,” and “Strange Fruit,” the latter of which is considered to be the first protest song of the civil rights era. Widely recognized as one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, Billie’s emotive voice, distinct phrasing, and flawless technique cemented her place as an American icon. Now, new and longtime fans alike have the opportunity to learn more about Lady Day’s short but spectacular life. At a time when the country is struggling with issues involving identity and race, this graphic novel provides a timely look into the fascinating life of a fighter, survivor, and world-renowned artist.

BILLIE HOLIDAY

BILLIE HOLIDAY
Author: Carlos Sampayo
Publisher: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2017-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781681120935

Born in Baltimore in 1915, and dead too early in New York in 1959, Billie Holiday became a legendary jazz singer, even mythical. With her voice even now managing to touch so many people, we follow a reporter on the trail of the artist on behalf of a New York daily. Beyond the public scandals that marred the life of the star (alcohol, drugs, violence...), he seeks to restore the truth, revisiting the memory of Billie. Through this investigation, Munoz and Sampayo trace, through the undertones of racism, and in the wake of the blues, the slow drift of a singer who expressed the deepest emotions in jazz. By internationally renowned Argentine artists, featuring Munoz strikingly raw heavy blacks, this is not just a biography but a spell-binding art book tribute."

Blues for Lady Day

Blues for Lady Day
Author: Paolo Paolo
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2020-05-15
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1642730424

Billie Holiday, one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, had a troubled life: a childhood in poverty, brothels, jail, broken love, and a dependence on alcohol and heroin. Her first performances in the night clubs of prohibitionist America was where her pioneering vocal style was born—later to become a lasting influence on jazz, pop, and modern music to this day. Performing with jazz legends such as Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw, she became a true American icon. This graphic novel, told through short biographical fragments, is the story of Lady Day.

Coltrane

Coltrane
Author: Paolo Parisi
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2013-03-28
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1448182034

'My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being...' John Coltrane rose from a hard and impoverished childhood in North Carolina to become one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. From session musician to band member of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, his raw talent and passion for experimentation inaugurated a new movement in music. Positioned at the beating heart of the 50s and 60s jazz world, Coltrane and his quartet created some of the most innovative and expressive music of the age, including the hit album My Favorite Things and the landmark work A Love Supreme. Juxtaposing scenes from Coltrane's personal life - his military career, addictions, political activism and love affairs - against snapshots of his major recordings, Coltrane evokes an extraordinary life and the momentous historical events that formed its backdrop. It is a graphic novel that echoes his work in its structure and style, and forms a testament to a pioneer and legend, whose music continues to inspire to this day.

Becoming Billie Holiday

Becoming Billie Holiday
Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Total Pages: 118
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1629791733

Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award The stunning voice and hard life of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday is revealed through evocative, accessible poetry. In 1915, Sadie Fagan gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanora. The world, however, would know her as Billie Holiday, possibly the greatest jazz singer of all time. Eleanora's journey to become a legend took her through pain, poverty, and run-ins with the law. By the time she was fifteen, she knew she possessed something that could possibly change her life--a voice. Eleanora could sing. Her remarkable voice led her to a place in the spotlight with some of the era's hottest big bands. Through a sequence of raw and poignant poems, New York Times best-selling and award-winning poet Carole Boston Weatherford chronicles the singer's young life, her fight for survival, and the dream she pursued with passion.

Rolling Stones in Comics!

Rolling Stones in Comics!
Author: Ceka
Publisher: NBM
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2019-03-15
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1681122006

When the Rolling Stones hit the scene in the 60's, it was to play rhythm & blues, nothing more. They were far from imagining that they would change music, let alone become the mouthpiece of a changing world. Sticking their tongue out at the establishment with their brilliant music and hard-hitting lyrics, they achieved planet-wide success. With Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in the lead, these rebels have become, over 50 years, not just a band, but a whole attitude! Through 21 stories in comics accompanied by biographical texts and a rich iconography, this book helps fans relive, in a totally new way, the incredible epic of one of the biggest rock bands ever.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit
Author: David Margolick
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2001-01-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0060959568

Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit
Author: Gary Golio
Publisher: Millbrook Press (Tm)
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2017
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1467751235

Tells the story of how Billie Holiday and songwriter Abel Meeropol combined their talents to create "Strange Fruit," the iconic protest song that brought attention to lynching and racism in America.

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
Author: Angela Y. Davis
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2011-10-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 030757444X

From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith−published here in their entirety for the first time−Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a conciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph.

Chasing the Scream

Chasing the Scream
Author: Johann Hari
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2015-01-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1620408929

The New York Times Bestseller What if everything you think you know about addiction is wrong? Johann Hari's journey into the heart of the war on drugs led him to ask this question--and to write the book that gave rise to his viral TED talk, viewed more than 62 million times, and inspired the feature film The United States vs. Billie Holiday and the documentary series The Fix. One of Johann Hari's earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of his relatives and not being able to. As he grew older, he realized he had addiction in his family. Confused, not knowing what to do, he set out and traveled over 30,000 miles over three years to discover what really causes addiction--and what really solves it. He uncovered a range of remarkable human stories--of how the war on drugs began with Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer, being stalked and killed by a racist policeman; of the scientist who discovered the surprising key to addiction; and of the countries that ended their own war on drugs--with extraordinary results. Chasing the Scream is the story of a life-changing journey that transformed the addiction debate internationally--and showed the world that the opposite of addiction is connection.