New Life

Early one morning last May, a fear-stricken Negro woman rushed from a Philadelphia hotel, jumped into a car and headed for New York. A federal narcotics agent whom she had nearly run over fired several shots after the speeding car. In her hotel room, officers found 1 1/2 grains of heroin. Two weeks later, sobbing the blues for sure, Jazz Singer Billie Holiday was on her way to do a year and a day at the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, W. Va.

Gardenia in Hair. Fortnight ago, eleven days after being released (72 days off for good behavior), Billie made her comeback in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. It was jampacked (300 were seated on the stage) with a crowd of Holiday cultists whose hysterical applause gave the event the quality of a revival meeting. They were telling their martyred Billie that nothing mattered, just so she was back, and that for their money (up to $3.60 a head) she could do no wrong.

Made statuesque by her 30 added pounds and sporting as always a great white gardenia in her glossy hair, Billie took her homage like a queen. Her voice, a petulant, sex-edged moan, was stronger than ever although she had done no singing at the reformatory. Seemingly tireless and with only three days of rehearsal behind her, she sang 32 numbers, mostly cultist favorites like Billie's Blues, All of Me, Fine and Mellow, and the throat-tightening Strange Fruit:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. . .

Parasites & Prosecutors. For Billie, the reformatory experience seemed the culmination of a tough-luck life. When she was born in Baltimore 33 years ago, her mother was 13, her father 15, and they didn't bother to get married until Billie was three. She began to work at six, scrubbing steps before school and minding babies after, was only 14 ("big for my age, had big breasts, big bones") when she got her first singing job in a Harlem joint at $2 a night. Her first record (Tapping the Barrel) was made with a green young band leader named Benny Goodman, and she was soon getting feature billing.

The year before her run-in with the federal men, Billie grossed close to $50,000, but had nothing left of her lifetime earnings of $250,000. According to her sympathetic federal prosecutor, the "worst type of parasite you can imagine" used to follow her around, charge $100 a dose for narcotics they sold to other addicts for as little as $5. By that time, Billie was looking gaunt, singing badly, and had fallen into the exasperating habit of walking out on waiting audiences without explanation.

The cure, says Billie's superintendent, "didn't bother her too much." She worked hard ("I had to wash dishes, scrub floors; I even worked in the piggery"); the 30 pounds she gained is apparently all muscle. Last week, Billie spoke with finality: "That's all over now; this is a new life."

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