Eleanora Fagen: b. April 7, 1915. d. July 17, 1959.

Eleanora Fagen. It's a name one might come across in the pages of a novel by Emily Brontë

or Charles Dickens. Born in 1915, Fagan would take the stage name Billie Holiday and change the course of American music.

Singer Dee Dee Bridgewater describes Holiday as ". . . a groundbreaking singer. Her style was extremely unique. Very avant-garde. She refused to go the way of other singers of her time. She was a vocalist who made it possible for singers like me to carve out a career for themselves." Frank Sinatra, who readily acknowledged Holiday's influence on his own singing, put it simply: "With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the U.S. during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single influence on me." In addition to "standing up for her individuality" and making a career for herself against incredible odds, including segregation and racism, Holiday, in Bridgewater's words, "went down fighting." (Excerpted from Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz.)