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Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday by Donald Clarke M4B



Plaudits:



"Crammed with jazz history and lore and sketches of legendary musicians, this biography will have great appeal for Holiday fans and jazz followers." - Publishers Weekly



"The singer, her songs, and her society are warmly illuminated in this well-done, major work." - Library Journal



"...a marvellous book from which emerges a picture of a woman with whose music you'll want to become better acquainted." - The Telegraph



"...may be the most thoroughly valuable of the many books on Holiday..." - The New York Times



"We should probably have to wait a long time for another life of Billie Holiday to supersede Donald Clarke’s achievement." Jazz Times



"Now, finally, we have a definitive biography by a deeply compassionate, respectful, and open-minded biographer [whose] portrait embraces every facet of Holiday’s paradoxical nature, from her fierceness to her vulnerability, her childlikeness to her innate elegance and amazing strength." - Booklist



Blurb:



No singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than jazz legend Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues - and this authentic biography sets the record straight.



Donald Clarke was given unrivaled access to a treasure trove of interviews from the 1970s with those who knew Lady Day in all stages of her short, tragic life - from her childhood in the streets and good-time houses of Baltimore, through the early days of success in New York and the years of fame, to her tragic decline and death at the age of 44. This biography separates fact from fiction to reveal the true Billie Holiday.



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