The story of Billie Holiday's final performance

As a girl, Billie Holiday fell in love with music while scrubbing the floors of a brothel

Record players were rarities in the 1920s, but Holiday had access to one at Alice Dean's, the brothel in Baltimore where she scrubbed floors. It was there that she listened to her heroes, Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.

Days after her release from prison, Billie Holiday sold out Carnegie Hall

The jazz icon was released early from federal prison on good behavior. Following her arrest, she was effectively prohibited from performing in New York's nightclubs, but she realized she could still perform, so long as it was in a venue that hadn't been deemed a "cabaret." The solution? The famous Carnegie Hall. The show sold out within a week, and the venue became a regular stop for Holiday, who performed there 22 times.

Billie Holiday ensured performances of 'Strange Fruit' had the right context

In the song's earliest performances at Cafe Society in New York, one of a few truly integrated nightclubs in the society, the song was always performed last, after bar service had stopped, with a single spotlight on Holiday so audiences would pay close attention to the lyrics. Later, Holiday included her ability to perform the song in her concert contracts, allowing her to sing it even if venue owners were nervous about its protest message.

After her arrest, a technicality made it harder for Holiday to perform

The Cabaret Identification Card was required for all performers in New York nightclubs that served liquor. After her arrest and yearlong imprisonment, the New York Police Department revoked Billie Holiday's card, making it extremely difficult for her to earn money. The video features contemporary jazz musician Christian McBride breaking down the history of cabaret cards and how the ban affected Holiday.

The federal agents who followed Billie Holiday

After the success of "Strange Fruit," the Federal Bureau of Narcotics began surveilling Holiday on suspicion that she was using heroin. Jimmy Fletcher, an agent tasked with following her to clubs and parties, later said that they became quite close. "She was the type who would make anyone sympathetic because she was the loving type," he was reported as saying.

Watch Billie Holiday perform in 'The Sound of Jazz'

The 1957 CBS special, part of its series "The Seven Lively Arts," was a landmark broadcast that brought some of jazz's biggest names—including Holiday, Thelonious Monk, and Count Basie—to a national audience. Watch Holiday offer a stirring rendition of "Fine and Mellow" below.

Watch Billie Holiday's only feature film appearance in 'New Orleans'

The 1947 film wasn't known for its sophisticated plot, which mainly centers on a white opera singer who learns about the beauty of blues and jazz. It's more notable for featuring some of those genre's biggest stars, including Holiday, who played a singing maid and the love interest of Louis Armstrong. You can see her first scene around the 11-minute mark.

Understanding how Billie Holiday's traumatic childhood led her to drugs

At 10 years old, the jazz singer was raped and then returned to House of the Good Shepard under protective custody. Her rapist was eventually convicted, but the court still sent her to an all-girls Catholic reform school. Jake Brennan, the host of the Disgraceland podcast, believes those early events led Holiday to the transcendent world of performing, but that it also led her to the escape of drugs.

A beginner's guide to the music of Billie Holiday

This primer from NPR breaks down some of the best entry points for newcomers to the jazz legend. From iconic tracks like "Strange Fruit" to deeper but essential late-era songs, the list offers a blueprint for appreciating Holiday before jumping into the deep end of her sprawling discography.

Analyzing Billie Holiday's impact on American poetry

Although Holiday is sometimes associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the Black cultural movement of the 1920s and '30s, scholar Whit Frazier Peterson argues that her real impact in poetry was on the Black Arts Movement, the more radical Black literary movement of the '60s and '70s that featured writers like Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni.

Watch Diana Ross posthumously induct Billie Holiday into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Holiday was posthumously inducted into the Hall in 2000 for her influence on the generations that followed her. Fittingly, Diana Ross, who played Holiday in a 1972 biopic, did the honors. She took the opportunity to sing an acapella verse of "Strange Fruit" and then offer some honorific poetry: "In this, a lesson: Artist, handle with care. Don't lose yourself in the music, beware stardom's glare."

Billie Holiday's distinctive vocal technique was aided by new microphone technology

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Holiday's voice was more reserved and seductive. In the past, that wouldn't have been practical—earlier microphones required singers to belt in order to be heard throughout a club or theater. However, technological breakthroughs in the 1930s produced more sophisticated and sensitive microphones, enabling a singer like Holiday to experiment with vocal dynamics.

Judee Sill's admirers hear a legend gone before her prime

The singer-songwriter released only two albums in her lifetime: 1971's self-titled and 1973's "Heart Food." Critics and contemporaries (including Graham Nash and David Crosby) praised both, though they were commercial flops. She died of a drug overdose in 1979 and had grown so obscure by then that no obituary was published. In the early 2000s, her recordings were reissued and found a new generation of fans.

Listen to 'Now and Then,' the Beatles' final song

The Beatles released their final song, "Now and Then," in October 2023, featuring a previously hidden John Lennon vocal. The track was initially shelved due to poor audio quality but was revived with the help of AI to enhance Lennon's performance....

Poet Robert Lowell encouraged O'Connor to turn away from commercial appeal

When O’Connor secured a publisher for “Wise Blood,” her publisher envisioned it as a broad, commercial comedy, something Lowell—the accomplished poet whom she met after graduate school at Yaddo, an artist colony in upstate New York—suggested she avoid, encouraging her to lean into her more esoteric and darker interests. This interview with O’Connor biographer Brad Gooch elaborates on that advice.

Many shows close without earning a profit

Broadway is a tough market, and a show closing early is relatively common, especially in the winter: Between December 2024 and February 2025, 17 shows closed. It's more than just low ticket sales: Broadway shows face a number of hurdles to success, including stop clauses and bad reviews.

Talese’s story on Joe DiMaggio examined the sports star’s life post-retirement

The profile, written in the aftermath of his popular “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” similarly offered a close look at an American icon after their prime. In DiMaggio’s story, however, the Yankees player seeks to vanish into obscurity and live a quiet life, golfing and mourning his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Watch Martha Graham perform 'Lamentation,' an influential piece on grief

Graham choreographed and performed the piece about grief, which premiered in 1930. The dance is performed while seated, with Graham's character attempting to free herself from an all-encompassing purple jersey.

Hank Williams' short career would be one of country's most important

Hank Williams died at the young age of 29. His funeral, attended by thousands, featured performances from Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb. This unabridged recording of the memorial is dark, but it’s also beautiful, especially when Acuff and his band break into “I Saw the Light.”

Whitman spent in his final years in Camden, New Jersey

There, he continued revising “Leaves of Grass” and enjoyed the city’s booming industrialization, spurred in part by the headquarters for Campbell’s Soup, until he died in 1892.

This social media account posts whenever Liza Minnelli outlives various historical events and people

A bizarre and hilarious tribute to the entertainment icon, this X account posts about the many happenings that come to an end while Liza Minnelli lives on. Posts include references to Minnelli outliving the Internet Explorer browser, "The Ellen Degenerous Show," and OJ Simpson.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Watch Grace Hopper's appearance on the 'Late Show with David Letterman'

During this comedic interview, Hopper describes her 43.5 years in the Navy, an anecdote about when President Reagan promoted her, and provides a visual aid to explain the transmission of information at the nanosecond scale via electricity.

Steve Jobs in his final public talk

The last major event outside of Apple that Steve Jobs spoke at, prior to his death in 2011, was the 2010 All Things Digital conference. In spite of his declining health, he is voluble and combative throughout.

YouTube no longer provides data to Billboard

Billboard began using data from YouTube in 2013, tracking the platform’s most popular songs as it became a hub for listeners. That relationship ended in January 2026, when YouTube announced it was ending the partnership, citing a disagreement over how Billboard weighted premium users more heavily than free users.

Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda tell the story of Alexander Hamilton on 'Drunk History'

On "Drunk History," Lin-Manuel Miranda retells Alexander Hamilton's life after the musical's success—revisiting the founding-era story that made Miranda famous, this time through the show's deliberately chaotic, comedic lens.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Ebola infects and disables immune cells, triggering a cascade of events that leads to small blood clots throughout the body, weakening blood vessels and interrupting blood flow to key organs.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.