If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780345449733)

More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most gifted artists of our time-and also one of the most elusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life, Lady Day has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildly distorted legends. Now at last, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a writer of intellectual authority and superb literary gifts, liberates Billie Holiday from the mythology that has obscured both her life and her art.

An intimate meditation on Holiday's place in American culture and history, If You Can't Be Free, Be A Mystery reveals Lady Day in all her complexity, humor and pain-a true jazz virtuoso whose passion and originality made every song she sang hers forever. Celebrated by poets, revered by recording artists from Frank Sinatra to Macy Gray, Billie Holiday is more popular and influential today than ever before. Now, thanks to this marvelous book, Holiday's many fans can finally understand the singer and the woman they love.

Author: Farah Jasmine Griffin
ISBN-10: 0345449738
ISBN-13: 9780345449733
Publisher: One World
Language: English
Published: 04/30/2002
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.47lbs
Size: 8.16h x 5.54w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Booksense '76 Sep/Oct 2002 09/01/2002 pg. 1