Few artists have done more to reconstruct the course of contemporary culture than Patti Smith (b. December 30 1946). Celebrated as the “Godmother of Punk,” her musical influence reverberates across acclaimed artists from Garbage to Morrissey to Madonna, and Michael Stipe famously cited her as the core inspiration for founding R.E.M. As a poet and visual artist, she has explored with lyrical poignancy issues of irrepressible urgency, ranging from foreign policy to mortality.
Among Smith’s greatest feats it the systematic demolition of the the perilous and artificial divide between “high” and “low” culture. In 1978, her song “Because the Night” from the groundbreaking album Horses reached #13 on the Billboard 100 chart; in 2010, her remarkable memoir Just Kids earned her the National Book Award. William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud have inspired much of her music, which has moved generations of hearts and bodies across dance floors and mosh pits. In 2005, she was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture; in 2006, she brought down the house at CBGB’s with an extraordinary 3½-hour masterpiece of a performance. The following year, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Allen Ginsberg once bought her a sandwich in the East Village after mistaking her for “a very pretty boy.”
In the decades between Horses (1975) and Banga (2012), Smith recorded nine other studio albums, delivered countless poetry readings, and authored a number of books, including the breathtaking The Coral Sea, which chronicles her grief over the loss of her onetime lover, lifelong friend, and comrade-in-artistic-arms Robert Mapplethorpe.
In Just Kids, which documents how Smith found her creative voice during her early life with Mapplethorpe when both were aspiring artists in New York City, she articulates the singular duality of her muse:
It’s the artist’s responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.
One of the most innovative and influential vocalists in modern history, Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), better-known as Billie Holiday and famously nicknamed Lady Day, shaped the evolution of jazz and pop music. With her distinctive vocal delivery, inspired by jazz instrumentation, and her innovative manipulation of tempo and phrasing, she ushered in a new era of singing, popularizing jazz and enthralling wider and wider audiences.
Yet Holiday’s life was a far cry from following a smooth upward trajectory into stardom.
Raised by a single mother and raped by her neighbor at the age of eleven, she spent her early teens running errands at a brothel in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith records. Shortly after her mother became a prostitute in Harlem, so did Eleanora. She was barely fourteen. But in the darkness of those early years, she somehow found the light that would guide her life. It was in Harlem that she first began singing at night clubs, taking her stage pseudonym from the names of actress Billie Dove and musician Clarence Halliday, the man she’d grown up considering her father. In November of 1933, at the age of 18, Holiday made her recording debut after the influential jazz producer and civil rights activist John Hammond found himself mesmerized by her voice at Covan’s club on West 132nd Street.
It took more than half a decade for Holiday to reach mainstream success, which she did in 1939 with her rendition of “Strange Fruit” — the highly political song based on the lynching of Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol. Holiday first performed it with great trepidation, partly in fear of political retaliation and partly because it reminded her of the injustice surrounding the death of her father, who she believed had been denied vital lung treatment due to racial bigotry.
Despite blossoming into critical acclaim, however, Holiday’s personal life was a whirlwind of turmoil. Openly bisexual, she bounced between numerous affairs with men and women, most notoriously with the glamorous Broadway actress Tallulah Bankhead. By the early 1940s, she was at the height of her career and was earning $1,000 per week, but had spiraled into addiction and was spending nearly all her income on drugs. Over the decade that followed, despite having become commercially successful, her drug use, drinking, and tumultuous relationships with abusive men gradually but steadily eroded both her health and her ability to ability to defend her professional standing as she was being progressively defrauded of her earnings.
Still, her talent and her passion for singing were never questioned. In 1958, Frank Sinatra called her “unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.” The following year, Holiday’s addiction finally claimed her and she died of heart failure caused by alcoholism-induced liver cirrhosis. Though she only had $0.70 in the bank at the time of her death, her imprint on music history remains priceless and inextinguishable. In 1973, Holiday was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, reminding us that talent and tragedy may go hand in hand but the height of the human spirit transcends the tragic.
Learn more: Wikipedia | Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography) | Billie Holiday (1995 biography)
When 23-year-old Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) first walked into the recording studio in 1938, she likely didn’t dare imagine that she would one day be celebrated as gospel music’s first superstar. The godmother of rock and roll. “The original soul sister.” But that’s precisely what the talented singer and electric guitarist went on to become, bridging the spiritual lyricism of gospel with the secular allure of rock and roll arrangements.
With her unique singing style and electrifying stage presence, Sister Rosetta has influenced a range of beloved musicians, including Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bonnie Raitt, and The Noisettes.
In 1998, the United States Postal Service honored Tharpe with a commemorative stamp. In 2003, a dozen contemporary musicians recorded the tribute album Shout, Sister, Shout!. In 2007, Tharpe was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Learn more: Wikipedia | NPR | Literary Jukebox
