Billie Holiday, certainly one of the foremost American song stylists and often called the greatest American jazz singer, was born Eleanora Harris on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia. After her birth to Sadie Harris, the facts about Billie are often in dispute, due in large part to Billie's own tendency to spin tales about her life that have small kernels of truth but cannot be accepted wholesale as fact. The truth about her life is as interesting, if not more so, than her invention—recent biographers benefitted from extensive oral interviews done for a projected biography by Linda Kuehl (who died before completing it).

Listening to her recordings is a parallel version of her tumultuous and heartfelt life, one that expresses her beauty and soulfulness—however, as writer Hetty Jones warns, "Sometimes you are afraid to listen to this lady." Her short life was consumed by...