Author Description

John Chilton, authority on jazz and himself a professional jazz trumpeter, has written the first ever biography of this extraordinary woman, sifting the truth of her dramatic and tragic life from the distortions and sensational treatment of her own notoriously unreliable autobiography, and the film of the same name, Lady Sings the Blues. Billie's Blues is also an account of her professional life and musicianship; the paradoxical story of a singer who never received the adulation from the general public that she needed but who exercised an indelible influence on her contemporaries.