Billie Holiday
Lady Sings the Blues
Written with William Dufty. Autobiography of the famous jazz singer packed full of anecdotes and her life's path which was not easy by any means not least as a black woman plying her trade in America. In some ways what Billie had to put up with seems like another world - in many ways probably not a lot different to today. One very interesting piece is about when Billie toured Europe and how we back in the 50s apparently treated drug addicts as medical cases with doctors giving addicts what they needed and governments putting addicts through the health service rather than the prison service. Billie talks about how many drug users are in American prisons and what a waste it is and with no proper rehabilitation many will go back on heroin. Also making the point that addicts buy drugs on the black market which are unpure leading to deaths and also very expensive leading to robberies. She hopes that in time, perhaps not her lifetime, that America will take up the European model. Unfortunately the opposite is true with America jailing more and more about half being for drug offences. Until the mid 70s the incarceration rate for American males was 200 per 100,000 population. That has gone up five fold. So for every 100 men 1 is in a federal prison. Half for drug offences. For the population those under "correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison)" it's nearly 3% of the population. One in three black boys born today will go to prison. Although drug use among African Americans is much less that amongst white Americans. It would break Billie's heart. Although the book ends on a very optimistic note about being clean and with a loving man she died a few years after it was published having been abused by her man, back on drugs and virtually penniless. A great read by a beautiful Lady with a tragic life story.
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