In the late 1960s, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl planned to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. Beginning in 1970, she spent eight years tracking down and recording interviews with key artists and personalities who knew the singer, who died in 1959. These interviews included conversations with Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms, and Count Basie as well as Holiday's cousin, school friends, lovers, lawyers, pimps and even the FBI agents who arrested her.
Kuehl's Holiday archives included interviews on 125 audio tapes, police files, transcripts of court cases, royalty statements, shopping lists, hospital records, private letters and transcripts and fragments of unfinished chapters. She would never complete what she started.
In 1978, Kuehl was found dead on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk after attending a Count Basie concert. The D.C. police concluded that her death was a suicide, determining that Kuehl jumped from her hotel room. Her family believes she may have been murdered for reasons unknown.
In 2018, documentary director James Erskine bought the rights to Kuehl's tapes, and his film, Billie, was released in 2019. This fascinating look at Holiday is a double tragedy—that of the brilliant, soulful singer's spiraling decline and Kuehl's own mysterious and terrible death at age 38.
Six months ago, Billie was posted on YouTube....
Kuehl's Holiday archives included interviews on 125 audio tapes, police files, transcripts of court cases, royalty statements, shopping lists, hospital records, private letters and transcripts and fragments of unfinished chapters. She would never complete what she started.
In 1978, Kuehl was found dead on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk after attending a Count Basie concert. The D.C. police concluded that her death was a suicide, determining that Kuehl jumped from her hotel room. Her family believes she may have been murdered for reasons unknown.
In 2018, documentary director James Erskine bought the rights to Kuehl's tapes, and his film, Billie, was released in 2019. This fascinating look at Holiday is a double tragedy—that of the brilliant, soulful singer's spiraling decline and Kuehl's own mysterious and terrible death at age 38.
Six months ago, Billie was posted on YouTube....
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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