Her name was Eleanora.

She grew up a latchkey kid before the term was used. Her mother worked away from home. Her father abandoned the family to pursue his dreams in music, playing with bands in the big band days of large orchestras.

For the first decade of Eleanora’s life she was raised by relatives as her mother struggled to make a living away from home.

Eleanora disliked her Catholic school. She was truant so much she was sent to a reform school. She served nine long months, going to school there. Her mother finally arrived when she was released.

Life now promised to be different.

Her mother wouldn’t be working away from home any longer. She had opened her own restaurant. Eleanora worked long hours beside.her mother in the restaurant when she wasn’t going to school,

Then, suddenly, she was sent back to the reform school.

It was for her protection. A neighbour attempted to rape her. She was ten years old. Her mother came home in time to protect her daughter. The man was criminally charged. Eleanora was sent back to the reform school until the court matter was settled.

Eleanora quit school at the age of 10. She got a job at a brothel running errands. Years before she began her teen years she was working and immersed in the seediest side of life, learning things many adults never learn. For extra money she cleaned houses in the neighbourhood.

It was the mid-1920s, long before the days of television. Radio was a thing. Music from both radio and phonographs would spill out of windows and into the street.

Eleanor was fascinated by a songstress named Becky Smith who combined soulful blues with a slow jazz rhythm. The mournful music seeped into Eleanor’s soul.

Nobody knows you

When you down and out

In my pocket not one penny

And my friends, I haven’t any.

The intro on one record was clumsy whorehouse piano, waiting for Becky Smith’s voice. Smith sang so mournfully it was like her world could end.

“There ain’t nothin’ I can do,” sang Smith. “Nothin’ I can say.”

The next lines were damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t lyrics.

That folks don’t criticize me.

I’m going to do what I want to anyway.

I don’t care what people say.

Eleanor also listened to a virtuoso with a trumpet with a joyful gravel voice. While listening to Louis Armstrong blare out West Side Blues, Eleanor was hooked.

She began to sing.

She auditioned for clubs, bars and soon was in demand.

She admired the name of a silent movie actress, Billy Dove, and adopted her first name. Her runaway father’s last name was Haliday, and she changed it to Holiday.

She took the stage as Billie Holiday, and the lady sang the blues.

In 1932, when Billie Holiday was 17, and had been a hand singer for three years, she met up with a guitar and banjo picker playing who had played with big bands most of of her life. Billy Holiday and found her father, Clarence Haliday, he and his daughter meeting as fellow musicians.

Three years later Billie Holiday appeared in a small part in a Duke Ellington film, Symphony in Black, singing the mournful tune, Saddest Tale. That film can still be viewed on YouTube if you want a view and a listen to Billie Holiday in her prime.