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Bitter Crop

The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon
“A book written as only one artist could view another, with insight and sincere compassion.” —Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of Woman Without Shame

In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.
During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop—a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.
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    • Library Journal

      September 1, 2023

      In Bitter Crop, former Time reporter Alexander looks at the last, challenging years of soaring jazz singer Billie Holiday, with flashbacks to key events in her life. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 22, 2024
      Biographer Alexander (Rough Magic) traces in this stellar and sometimes-devastating account the remarkable life of a “jazz legend” whose voice “had nothing to do with reality but everything to do with the truth,” as poet Owen Dodson once put it. Using as a narrative frame the artist’s final year—during which she dealt with cirrhosis of the liver and professional setbacks—Alexander flashes back to defining events of Holiday’s life, including engaging in prostitution as a teen, struggling with alcoholism, spending stints in prison for narcotics possession, and entering into a string of abusive marriages, the last of which—to Louis McKay—lasted in name until her 1959 death, when he inherited her assets even though she’d planned on divorcing him. Despite such challenges, Holiday—who’d changed her name from Eleanora to the more commercial-sounding “Billie” in her late teens—emerges as an artist who felt most alive while performing and conveyed in her songs the often-dark truths of her life better than any journalist could. Chronicling Holiday’s career, Alexander covers in meticulous detail her early successes; collaborations and friendships (she developed an especially close relationship with saxophonist Lester Young); and the music itself, including 1958’s Lady in Satin, her penultimate album and a “masterpiece of longing and sorrow” made singular by her beautifully “damaged, tortured voice.” The result is an excellent biography befitting of its inimitable subject.

    • Library Journal

      January 26, 2024

      Alexander (Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath) adopts a unique narrative structure in this biography based on the last year of Billie Holiday's life. That is when she developed a severe case of cirrhosis of the liver after years of a substance use disorder. As Alexander counts down the months until the singer's death in July of 1959 at the age of 44, he acquaints readers with the salient events and characters that made up the story of her life by moving back and forth in time, which may confuse some readers. Throughout, the book describes Holiday's singular legacy in the world and her live performances; some were triumphant, whereas others were labeled "disastrous." VERDICT Ultimately, this book achieves a successful and accurate tribute to Lady Day and her immense talent while also painting a stark and honest portrait of her life and hardships. Recommended for fans of jazz and the legendary Holiday.--Amy Shaw

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 15, 2024
      A talented biographer paints a memorable portrait of an American master. Alexander, the author of biographies of J.D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, and John McCain, revisits the story of the brilliant jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959), concentrating on the final year of her life, which almost perfectly encapsulated the spirit of her turbulent success, ambition, and significant struggles with romantic relationships, alcohol, and drugs. Readers familiar with jazz will instantly recognize the title's reference to Holiday's most recognizable song, "Strange Fruit," the poignant anti-lynching anthem that met with mixed reviews from white audiences and warnings from the federal government against its performance. Alexander's evocative prose seamlessly complements the painstaking research that he conducted via interviews with contemporaries of Holiday, his thorough archival mining, and his use of never-before-seen material from private collections to distinguish the fact, fiction, and embellishment about Holiday's life that has been disseminated by music critics, early biographers, and Holiday herself. Though Alexander demonstrates an impressive knowledge of jazz, this book is not exclusively for music aficionados. He tells Holiday's story while delivering a cogent social history of America in the first half of the 20th century. The author incorporates published reviews of Holiday's performances, interviews she gave, and wonderfully composed vignettes of TV, radio, and recording performances, particularly the session that produced what Holiday considered her finest album and life metaphor, Lady in Satin (1958). That album "would come to represent a final capstone in a life that was defined by personal heartbreak eclipsed by a level of artistic achievement rarely witnessed in the world of popular music." Alexander demonstrates why--despite the disappointments, broken dreams and relationships, and personal failings--Holiday believed her life to be a triumph. He has written a tale as unique as Holiday's voice and, more importantly, given voice to the life of an American original. An extraordinarily fascinating book.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from February 1, 2024
      Billie Holiday embellished and invented stories about her life, creating a persona to reflect her unique voice and profound artistry as a transformative jazz performer. Alexander, biographer of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger, reveals another set of fabrications regarding Holiday, those spawned by racism, sexism, and resentment and weaponized by federal agents and the New York police as they tried to destroy her career--even assailing her on her deathbed. In a stringent and clarifying inquiry into the betrayals and abuse Holiday faced, and the triumphs she nonetheless achieved, Alexander chronicles the last harrowing year of the singer's tragically shortened life. He also tracks back to document the suffering that stoked her fatal alcoholism and her courage in defying the FBI by continuing to sing the haunting anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit" in spite of being surveilled, harassed, framed, arrested, and imprisoned for narcotics possession while being denied the cabaret card she needed to perform in New York clubs. Alexander delves into Holiday's loving affairs with women, disastrous relationships with duplicitous and violent men, sustaining friendships, and essential musical collaborations. In fluent command of an enormous amount of detail both enraging and awe-inspiring, Alexander vividly recounts Holiday's valiant and ravishing last recordings and performances as her health deteriorated but her conviction stayed strong. A portrait as affecting and indelible as Holiday's exquisite performances.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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