Considered as 'jazz royalty' and one of the greatest jazz-blues singers of all time, Holiday appeared in clubs around the U.S. with great success throughout the 1940s and '50s.

Having been raped twice in her childhood and working as a prostitute in the 30s in New York, her voice increasingly showed the effects of her long-term heroin addiction. She died hospital (while under arrest for possession of illegal drugs) of heart and liver disease.