Billie Holiday August 1957

Written by

Robert Richardson

in

MOMENT IN TIME: ARCHIVE JAZZ

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Jazz singer Billie Holiday in her last appearance in Toronto at the Town Tavern, August 10, 1957. Photo by Erik Christensen / For The Globe and Mail Originally published July 18, 1959. ERIK CHRISTENSEN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Billie Holiday performs in Toronto
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo librarians have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we’re celebrating jazz.
Pictured at the Town Tavern on Aug. 10, 1957, jazz singer Billie Holiday made her final appearances in Toronto with a week of performances at that venue. In his review of her Saturday show, Patrick Scott pulled no punches. “The bent notes and broken phrasing that used to come with such unpredictable charm and effect are now delivered with so calculated and mannered a fashion as to be almost comical,” he wrote. Still, the artist known as Lady Day commanded respect. The Town Tavern’s in-house drummer, Archie Alleyne, would later recall that the room was unusually silent during God Bless the Child: “There was no clinking of glasses, and the kitchen staff came out and stood in the doorway of the kitchen.” Holiday died less than two years later, on July 17, 1959. The cause of death was cirrhosis. She was just 44. Brad Wheeler

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