Lady Day was born under the name of Eleanora Fagan. How much suffering does it take to express love, pain, despair, or even life itself? Few singers have communicated emotions like Billie Holiday. Her father, a jazz guitarist, wouldn’t recognise her and so refused to give his daughter his name. He was more interested in nightlife than in family life. Billie’s mother was a cleaner, cook and occasional prostitute who abandoned her daughter to the care of her aunts or a reformatory. Billie had a life of violence that commonly included rape and physical abuse of all kinds.

In between prostitution, prison and a few gigs in sordid dives where a customer’s generosity was her only means of support, Billie managed to record for Columbia when she was only nineteen. It was the beginning of a recognition that never waned over the years. Few voices of the past eight decades were as capable of moving the hearts of those who loved female singers in the same way as Billie Holiday.