1-800-336-4627
Ella Fitzgerald - 88% match to Billie Holiday
Ella Jane Fitzgerald, 25 April 1917, Newport News, Virginia, USA, d. 15 June 1996, Beverly Hills, California, USA. Following the disappearance of her father, Fitzgerald was taken to Yonkers, New York by her mother and her new man Joseph da Silva. At school she sang with a glee club and showed early promise, but preferred dancing to singing. Even so, chronic shyness militated Read more 
Dinah Washington - 70% match to Billie Holiday
Ruth Lee Jones, 29 August 1924, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA, d. 14 December 1963, Detroit, Michigan, USA. Raised in Chicago, Dinah Washington first sang in church choirs for which she also played piano. She then worked in local clubs, where she was heard by Lionel Hampton, who promptly hired her. She was with Hampton from 1943-46, recording hits with ‘Evil Gal Blues’, Read more 
Sarah Vaughan - 57% match to Billie Holiday
Sarah Lois Vaughan, 27 March 1924, Newark, New Jersey, USA, d. 3 April 1990, Los Angeles, California, USA. Although she was not born into an especially musical home environment (her father was a carpenter and her mother worked in a laundry), the young Sarah Vaughan had plenty of contact with music-making. As well as taking piano lessons for nearly 10 years, she sang in her c Read more 
Nina Simone - 56% match to Billie Holiday
Eunice Kathleen Waymon, 21 February 1933, Tryon, North Carolina, USA, d. 21 April 2003, Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. An accomplished pianist as a child, Eunice Waymon made her public debut at the age of 10 in her native North Carolina. She later moved to Philadelphia and studied at New York’s Juilliard School Of Music but left in 1954 after struggling Read more 
Chet Baker - 52% match to Billie Holiday
Chesney Henry Baker, 23 December 1929, Yale, Oklahoma, USA, d. 13 May 1988, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. One of the more lyrical of the early post-war trumpeters, Baker’s fragile sound epitomized the so-called ‘cool’ school of white west coast musicians who dominated the American jazz scene of the 50s.Baker studied music while in the arm Read more 
Louis Armstrong - 40% match to Billie Holiday
4 August 1901, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, d. 6 July 1971, New York City, New York, USA. It is impossible to overstate Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong’s importance in jazz, as he was one of the most influential artists in the music’s history. He was also more than just a jazz musician, he was an enormously popular entertainer (a facet upon which some critics f Read more 
Bessie Smith - 37% match to Billie Holiday
15 April 1894, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, d. 26 September 1937, Clarksdale, Mississippi, USA. In her childhood, Smith sang on street corners before joining a touring black minstrel show as a dancer. Also in the show was Ma Rainey, and before long the young newcomer was also singing the blues. The older woman encouraged Smith, despite the fact that even at this early stage Read more 
Anita O'Day - 36% match to Billie Holiday
Anita Belle Colton, 18 October 1919, Chicago, Illinois, USA, d. 23 November 2006, West Hollywood, California, USA. As Anita Colton, in her early teens she scraped a living as a professional Walkathon contestant (marathon dancer). During this period she changed her surname to O’Day. Along with other contestants she was encouraged to sing and during one Walkathon was acco Read more 
Peggy Lee - 36% match to Billie Holiday
Norma Deloris Egstrom, 26 May 1920, Jamestown, North Dakota, USA, d. 21 January 2002, California, USA. Peggy Lee was of Scandinavian descent, her grandparents being Swedish and Norwegian immigrants. She endured a difficult childhood and her mother died when she was four; when her father remarried she experienced a decidedly unpleasant relationship with her stepmother. Her fa Read more 
Duke Ellington - 33% match to Billie Holiday
Edward Kennedy Ellington, 29 April 1899, Washington, DC, USA, d. 24 May 1974, New York City, New York, USA. Ellington began playing piano as a child but, despite some local success, took up a career as a sign-painter. In his teens he continued to play piano, studied harmony, composed his first tunes and was generally active in music in Washington. Among his childhood friends Read more 
John Coltrane - 33% match to Billie Holiday
John William Coltrane, 23 September 1926, Hamlet, North Carolina, USA, d. 17 July 1967, New York, USA. Coltrane grew up in the house of his maternal grandfather, Rev. William Blair (who gave him his middle name), a preacher and community spokesman. While he was taking clarinet lessons at school, his school band leader suggested his mother buy him an alto saxophone. In 1939 h Read more 
Lester Young - 33% match to Billie Holiday
Lester Willis Young, 27 August 1909, Woodville, Mississippi, USA, d. 15 March 1959, New York City, New York, USA. Born into a musical family, Young was taught several instruments by his father. As a child he played drums in the family’s band, but around 1928 he quit the group and switched to tenor saxophone. His first engagements on this instrument were with Art Bronson Read more 
Etta James - 32% match to Billie Holiday
Jamesetta Hawkins, 25 January 1938, Los Angeles, California, USA. James’ introduction to performing followed an impromptu audition for Johnny Otis backstage at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium. ‘Roll With Me Henry’, her ‘answer’ to the Hank Ballard hit ‘Work With Me Annie’, was retitled ‘The Wallflower’ in an effort to dis Read more 
Julie London - 30% match to Billie Holiday
Julie Peck, 26 September 1926, Santa Rosa, California, USA, d. 18 October 2000, Encino, California, USA. Actress-singer London was inextricably linked to the sultry Arthur Hamilton song ‘Cry Me A River’, which gave the artist her sole million-seller in 1955. Her memorable performance of the song in the movie The Girl Can’t Help It, showcased a lachrymose deliv Read more 
Madeleine Peyroux - 30% match to Billie Holiday
1974, Athens, Georgia, USA. A precocious contemporary jazz singer, Madeleine Peyroux was first spotted singing in a Greenwich Village bar in New York, USA, by Atlantic Records Vice President of A&R, Yves Beauvais, in the early 90s. By the advent of her debut album in 1996, Peyroux had already spent much of her young life as a busker and club performer, working principall Read more
Artist matches
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