Media Review

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Notes

1 Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday. Directed by Matthew Seig. New York: Multiprises Productions, 1990 (additional audio excerpts on DVD); Robert O’Meally, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1991); Donald Clarke, Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000); Julia Blackburn, With Billie: A New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day (New York: Vintage Books, 2005). Blackburn has the longest extracts from the transcripts.

2 See for example, Anslinger, The Protectors: The Heroic Story of the Narcotics Agents, Citizens and Officials in their Unending, Unsung Battles against Organized Crime in America and Abroad (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Company, 1964), 150 and 157.

3 Thanks to Tab Lewis, Archivist of the National Archives and Records Administration.

4 Stuart Nicholson, Billie Holiday (London: Orion Books, 1995). A third edition is forthcoming in 2022.

5 Blackburn, With Billie, 111.

6 Ibid., note on 111, repeated on 203.

7 Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 17–18, ebook. Note too that Hari’s celebrated career at The Independent (UK) ended in 2011 when he was found to have plagiarized, for which he later published an apology. See Johann Hari, “Johann Hari: A Public Apology,” The Independent, October 31, 2011, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-personal-apology-2354679.html (accessed June 10, 2021).

8 David Margolick, Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2013), 110–21, ebook.

9 Blackburn, With Billie, 216.

1 Naomi Obeng, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday Reprises the Same Old Blues,” Sight and Sound, 22 March 2021, https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/united-states-vs-billie-holiday-andra-day-lee-daniels-singer-persecution (accessed June 11, 2021).

2 Matt Zoller Seitz, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday movie review (2021),” RogerEbert.com. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-united-states-vs-billie-holiday-2021 (accessed June 11, 2021).

3 George Custen, Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), Introduction, Kindle edition.

4 The United States vs. Billie Holiday, directed by Lee Daniels. 2021.

5 Hari devotes only about five pages to Fletcher and Holiday. See Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2015). See also Rebecca Keegan, “In the United States vs Billie Holiday, Lee Daniels Tackles the Untold Story of the Jazz Singer’s Civil Rights Activism,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 11, 2021, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/united-states-vs-billie-holiday-4114540/ (accessed June 11, 2021).

6 Lee Daniels, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday Director Lee Daniels on the Singer’s Real Legacy: Her Activism,” Variety. February 17, 2021, https://variety.com/2021/voices/columns/director-lee-daniels-billie-holiday-1234909149/ (accessed June 10, 2021).

7 Jazz Tangcay, “Recording Andra Day as Billie Holiday Was an Exercise in ‘Surround’ Sound,” Variety. Feb 26, 2021, https://variety.com/2021/artisans/awards/behind-music-united-states-billie-holiday-1234916587/ (accessed June 11, 2021).

8 Released 2021 on HBO.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lewis Porter

Lewis Porter, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Music from Rutgers University at Newark, is a pianist, author, and educator.

Gayle Murchison

Gayle Murchison is Associate Professor of Music at the College of William and Mary. Her most recent publications include book chapters on Nadia Boulanger in the US, music in Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Woman, and Mary Lou Williams’s Girl Stars. She is the author of The American Musical Stravinsky: The Style and Aesthetic of Copland’s New American Music, the Early Works, 1921–1938 (The University of Michigan Press, 2012). Her research interests focus on African American and African disaporic music, ranging from Mary Lou Williams, William Grant Still, and the music of social and cultural movements (such as the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Movements, and, the music of Zap Mama and Afro-European studies). She served as editor of Black Music Research Journal 2014–2019. She is currently writing a book on Mary Lou Williams in Europe, 1952–1954.