Billie Holiday: The singer who inspired Nina Simone to greatness before she turned on her
They do say never meet your heroes, but would you really describe yours by saying: “I don’t like drug addicts, and she sounds like a cat”? It may be an unconventional approach, but it was the one chosen by Nina Simone with regards to jazz’s influential godmother, Billie Holiday. As such, it opens up a bizarre web into the story of two of the genre’s most pivotal female pioneers – but one, despite the illusion that their respective melodies might fool you into, that wasn’t always pretty.
Simone’s ire only becomes stranger in the context that things weren’t always this tense between the pair, indeed with she herself having honoured Holiday’s songbook on countless occasions by covering her work in recorded songs and live performances. Like the rest of the world, Simone started her career in awe of America’s Lady Day, using the groundwork she laid to propel her own sonic visions until she became just as equally prolific a force.
To that end, one of Simone’s earliest breakthrough successes was in the form of a Holiday cover, the song ‘I Loves You, Porgy’ which the singer had originally performed in 1948. Popularising her take on the song on her debut album in 1959, in many ways, Simone should have been indebted to Holiday for essentially being the muse on which she kickstarted her career, but it seemed that no such goodwill extended far into her career.
The voices of both women were pivotal to not only the cultural but also sociopolitical moment they existed in, and the combination of the two would have proved to be a seismic reckoning, but alas, this was not to be over the course of history. Instead, rather than coming together, Simone and Holiday preferred to stay in different camps, despite the fact they were more often than not singing from the same hymn sheet.
Exemplifying this most overtly were the pair’s respective powerful renditions of ‘Strange Fruit’, which Holiday originated first before Simone followed suit. The haunting resonance of the racist violence which plagued their native country at the time clearly struck a chord with them both, and it would have provided an even more anthemic message had they collaborated on this front, but stigmas and misconceptions would forever get in the way of this happening.
At least in this respect, to an outsider, the similarities between the singers were more than pretty obvious. But not so, it seems, to Simone herself, who rebuked her comparison to Holiday with horror in a 1997 interview by proclaiming, “What an insult!” To return to her searing putdown about drug addicts and cats, it was true that Lady Day did have her struggles with substances and erratic vocal health in her latter years, there was no denying that her overall impact to jazz and the story of music at large was untarnished – to all but Simone, that was.
For her part, Simone was also no stranger to the harsh reality of addiction, but whether it was real obstinance or just bravado, it was clear that she didn’t appreciate being chalked up against Holiday and wouldn’t stand for any such statements. Maybe she didn’t like being seen as riding on the coattails of her legacy, or just somehow felt that her own music offered up something more, but either way, what was an obvious parallel to some was a horrific insult to the woman herself. It may seem confusing on the surface, but neither of them would have become pioneers if they hadn’t carved out their own path.
