PBA Galleries

Pp. 32-35, 79-81 in Tan (magazine). Illustrated with photographs of Holliday, including front cover color photo of her with pet dogs.

One of the greatest Jazz singers of the 20th century, Billie Holiday was arrested for possession of narcotics at the height of her career in 1947; she pled guilty, spent some time at a Federal Prison Camp, then staged a wildly-successful comeback concert at Carnegie Hall, but was again arrested for drug possession in 1949. She continued to perform and remained popular despite continued drug abuse, alcoholism and failing health which affected her voice. Deciding to speak openly about her personal problems on an early television “reality show” in October 1953, she first wrote this autobiographic article which appeared in a true-confessions, gossip-type magazine owned by John Johnson, the Black publisher of the better-known Negro Digest, Jet and Ebony. This rare issue predated by three years Holliday’s frank book memoir, Lady Sings the Blues.