When your father is 16 and your mother 13, life isn't going to be easy and throw in being guilty of being black in America then it's almost impossible. I became one of the first women of color to sing in an orchestra comprised of white people when i began to work with bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw although as i was guilty of not being white, i was not allowed to sit on the bandstand with my fellow musicians and had to enter and leave buildings through the kitchen rather than the front door.I got into heroin and alcohol and one day in 1947 everything changed for me when i got busted for possession and sentenced to Alderson Federal Prison Camp.
As i now had a criminal conviction, my Cabaret Card was revoked which meant that i was unable to perform music anywhere which sold alcohol which hit my career.
One of my most famous songs was Gloomy Sunday, a song which was said to be so depressing that at least one hundred suicides were attributed to it and the BBC banned my version of the song from being broadcast, only allowing performances of instrumental versions.
My other, and most famous song, was 'Strange Fruit', a song about the 'fruit' often seen swinging in the breeze that trees in the Southern US states seemed to sprout at an alarmingly and horrific rate at that time.
After years of alcohol dependency, i was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and took up treatment for liver disease and heart disease but that day in 1947 came back to haunt me even as i lay dying.
I spent my final moments of life under arrest, it seemed the police were so determined to log that they had arrested me again, they made damned sure they got me before i inconveniently died so arrested me just as i took my last breath.
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