Clarence Halliday (

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, July 23, 1898 –

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

, March 1, 1937), also known as Clarence Holiday, was an American musician. He was the father of the singer

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...

Early life

In Baltimore he attended a boys' school with the banjo player Elmer Snowden. Both of them played banjo with various Baltimore jazz bands, including the band of Eubie Blake. At the age of 16, Holiday became the unmarried father of Billie Holiday, who was born to 19-year-old Sarah Fagan (later Sadie Harris). He rarely visited Harris or her daughter. He moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia when he was 21 years old.

Career

Holiday played rhythm guitar and banjo as a member of the

Fletcher Henderson Orchestra James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson (December 18, 1897 – December 29, 1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and Swing (genre), swing music. He was one of the most proli ...

(1928–33). He also recorded with Benny Carter (1934) and Bob Howard (1935) and worked with Charlie Turner (1935),

Louis Metcalf Louis Metcalf (February 28, 1905 - October 27, 1981) was an American jazz trumpeter who played for a short time with Duke Ellington. Early life Metcalf was born in Webster Groves, Missouri, United States. As a youth he first trained on the drums ...

(1935–36), and the Don Redman Big Band (1936–37).

Death

Holiday died in 1937. He was exposed to

mustard gas Mustard gas or sulfur mustard is a chemical compound belonging to a family of cytotoxic and blister agents known as mustard agents. The name ''mustard gas'' is technically incorrect: the substance, when dispersed, is often not actually a gas, b ...

while serving in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Later, he fell ill with a lung disorder while on tour in Texas and was refused treatment at a local hospital. When he finally managed to get treatment, he was only allowed in the

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

ward of the Veterans Hospital, and by then pneumonia had set in and without antibiotics, the illness was fatal. Two years later Billie Holiday recorded the song “

Strange Fruit "Strange Fruit" is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol published in 1937. The song protests the lynching of Black ...

” in her father's memory.

References

1898 births 1937 deaths African-American musicians American jazz guitarists 20th-century guitarists African-American guitarists 20th-century African-American people Deaths from pneumonia in Texas {{US-jazz-guitarist-stub