Billie Holiday, also known as Lady Day, was an American jazz singer who faced numerous challenges throughout her life. Despite growing up in poverty and facing racism in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, she became a successful concert performer and sold out shows. She was able to create a series of enduring jazz classics during the 1930s and 1940s, including “I Wished on the Moon,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” and “I Cried for You”. Although she enjoyed success and admiration for her recording of “Strange Fruit,” which portrayed a Southern lynching, few listeners realize how Billie Holiday took the tradition of the previous generation of female blues singers and applied it to the American Popular Song. Her ability to personalize songs made her performances seem autobiographical, and audiences were captured by her ability to make them feel. Despite her personal struggles and an altered voice, her final recordings were met with mixed reaction but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, “Lady in Satin,” was released in 1958. Billie Holiday’s music continues to inspire and influence musicians today.