Linda Lipnack Kuehl (January 24, 1940 – February 6, 1978) was an American arts journalist, based in New York City. Intending to write a biography of

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 ...

, she interviewed friends, fellow performers, and key figures in Holiday's life, but died before its completion. Various other writers' biographies on Holiday have drawn upon Kuehl's material, as did the film '' Billie'' (2019), which is narrated by Kuehl's recorded interviews. She worked as a high school teacher and free lance writer.

Arts journalism career

Interviews that Kuehl conducted with writers were published in ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...

'' in 1972 and 1978. She was a Jewish feminist and a fan of

. In 1971, she began plans for a biography of Holiday, who had died aged 44 in 1959. She interviewed almost 200 people—friends, family members, band members, peers from 1930s Harlem, piano players, psychiatrists and a pimp—and was still finding people in 1978. Her archive on Holiday included these interviews on 125 audio tapes as well as "a long paper trail, including police files, transcripts of court cases, royalty statements, shopping lists, hospital records, private letters, muddled transcripts and fragments of unfinished chapters." However, Kuehl did not complete the book. In 1978 she was found dead on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk, after attending a

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

concert. "Police deemed it suicide, Kuehl having supposedly jumped from her hotel room, although there was no proof of this", and her family believes she may have been murdered. Kuehl's research revealed that Holiday's addictions were "becoming a crutch for a life beset with violence, misogyny and racism."

Legacy

Her archive passed to a private collector and was later used in other writers' biographies of Holiday. The interviews were a major source for the text in Robert O'Meally's book of photographs ''Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday'' (1991) and around the same were used for the script for a ''Masters of American Music'' series documentary of the same name. Some of Kuehl's material was used in Donald Clarke's 1994 biography, ''Wishing on the Moon'' and her interviews were used in

Julia Blackburn Julia Blackburn (born 1948) is a British author of both fiction and non-fiction. She is the daughter of poet Thomas Blackburn and artist Rosalie de Meric. Julia Blackburn's bohemian and troubled upbringing is the subject of her memoir ''The Thr ...

's 2005 biography ''With Billie: a New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day.'' Documentary director James Erskine bought the rights to Kuehl's tapes and his subsequent film, '' Billie'' (2019), is "a journey through Holiday's life, narrated by the voices on those tapes", including Kuehl's.

Personal life

Kuehl's parents were Sol and Ida Lipnack and she had a sister, Myra Luftman.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuehl, Linda Lipnack 1978 suicides 1978 deaths American women biographers 20th-century American biographers American writers Place of birth missing Jewish feminists 20th-century American women 1940 births Suicides by jumping in Washington, D.C.