​"If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."

• SINGER
• Born Eleanora Fagan, she endured a tragic childhood marked by abandonment and trauma
• Although she never had any formal music training, she started singing in jazz clubs in her teens and was picked up by a talent agent when she was 18, recording an album with famous jazz bandleader Benny Goodman
• Nicknamed "Lady Day," she performed with the biggest names in the industry, including Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Lester Young
• One of the FIRST Black singers to perform with a white orchestra
• Famous also for her performances of the song Strange Fruit, which protested lynching
• Posthumously given four Grammy awards, and inducted into both the Grammy and Rock & Roll halls of fame
• Although she had barely an octave range, she's considered by many to be the MOST INFLUENTIAL singer of all time because of her emotionally raw performances, and her revolutionary phrasing, which lagged slightly behind the beat and felt more natural -- a style that almost every singer after her has emulated

Photo from Billboard magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography: Doyle, Caitlin. Girls Can Do Anything: From Sports to Innovation, Art to Politics, Meet Over 200 Women Who Got There First. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2016. Print.

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