Panic in the Streets

Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a... seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing "Easy Living", "Good Morning Heartache", and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording. Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan . Her father, Clarence Halliday , a musician, did not marry or live with her mother. Her mother had moved to Philadelphia when thirteen, after being ejected from her parents' home in Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore for becoming pregnant.
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New Orleans is the birthplace of Jazz, a major US port city, important in river transshipment, naval logistics, and the illegal drug trade. New Orleans is located at the mouth of the Mississipi River, just south of where the river splits off into Lake Pontchartrain, which forms the northern city... limit and a unique ecosystem because of the salt water boundary. The Pontchartrain Causeway is the longest bridge in the world. New Orleans is unique in the United States for many reasons. It shares more in common with european cities and Montreal than most other American cities, and both historically and liguistically has more in common with other port cities like New York than other cities in the South . The architecture of the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, mainly comes from the 18th century Spanish period, is reminiscent of many european cities, and changes are tightly controlled. The Garden District contains many stately mansions built in the early 19th century, after the city was purchased by the US. There are two distinct local cuisines, cajun and haute creole. Culturally and economically, since the decline of the local oil industry in the 1970's, the city and the attitude of local residents have more in common with a banana republic or a small caribbean nation than most US cities. Tourism is the major industry, and Mardi Gras is the major holiday.
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